Its name is a reference to the Red Queen's race in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, in which the chess board moves such that Alice must continue running just to stay in the same place.

As a biologist, Van Valen considered the role of zoological and botanical gardens, in a world with a degrading natural environment, to be essential for the safeguard of endangered flora and fauna.

[5][6] On the University of Chicago website for the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, Van Valen had written and posted this about himself: I am a generalist and tend to open new approaches more than fill them in.

I am currently writing a book that expands on my perspective (the Red Queen's hypothesis) of trophic energy as a major controller of evolution and ecology.

I am looking at the basal Cenozoic radiation of placental mammals from this perspective; there are surprisingly large changes in the group selection causing the changes, and in its components; (2) Single-species populations of birds decrease in density with body size at the same rate as the total energy flow through single individuals increases.

Some examples: norm of reaction, biogeography, fossil mammals, mathematical anthropological genetics, complexity, body size, human sociobiology, developmental noise, sloth limbs, natural selection, allometry.