The Red Queen hypothesis (Van Valen, 1973) names the evolutionary 'run to stay in place' dynamic — constant extinction probability regardless of a taxon's age

The Red Queen hypothesis, proposed by Leigh Van Valen in 1973, is named for the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who tells Alice that in her country "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Van Valen used the image to explain his "Law of Extinction": the observation that a taxon's probability of extinction appears roughly constant over time, independent of how long the taxon has already survived. The underlying idea is that species exist in a continual coevolutionary struggle — as one lineage adapts, the competitors, predators, and parasites it faces adapt in turn, so that relative fitness is eroded as fast as it is gained. Continuous adaptation is therefore required merely to maintain a constant probability of survival, not to improve it.

The hypothesis is one of two distinct evolutionary ideas the vault tracks as donors of metaphors to other fields; the other is punctuated equilibrium (claim-punctuated-equilibrium-derives-from-mayr-peripatric-speciation). The two make different claims — Red Queen is about constant coevolutionary pressure, punctuated equilibrium about long stasis broken by rapid change — and should not be conflated.

The definitional content here clears the sourcing floor at Tier 4 (Wikipedia is acceptable for settled definitions), but the specific "constant extinction probability" formulation is Van Valen's own theoretical claim and traces to his 1973 paper "A New Evolutionary Law," which the capture did not open. The model was later carried out of biology and into organizational strategy by William Barnett — claim-barnett-applied-red-queen-to-organizational-competition — and the capture used it as a lens on semiconductor capital arms-races (claim-rocks-law-is-moores-laws-economic-inverse).