So did you know that biologists use characters from Carroll to describe biological phenomena? I didn’t. The Red Queen has been in use for some time, but now the Cheshire Cat has his turn, describing a phenomenon whereby a particular species of marine life ‘escapes’ from a hazardous environment – in this case one with a virus. If you understand it all, please enlighten me 😉 From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
…These “Cheshire Cat” ecological dynamics release host evolution from pathogen pressure and thus can be seen as an opposite force to a classic “Red Queen” coevolutionary arms race. In E. huxleyi, this phenomenon can account for the fact that the selective balance is tilted toward the boom-and-bust scenario of optimization of both growth rates of calcifying E. huxleyi cells and infectivity of EhVs
Communicated by Paul G. Falkowski, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, August 6, 2008 (received for review June 9, 2008)
