life-dinner principle
life-dinner principle noun: a principle of asymmetry in selective pressure between predators and prey.
Noun
life-dinner principle
- A principle of asymmetry in selective pressure between predators and prey.
- The life-dinner principle (unequal selection pressures) ¶ ‘The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner’ (Dawkins 1979, after Aesop). There is a built in imbalance between predator and prey with respect to the penalty...1979, Richard Dawkins, John Krebs, “Arms races between and within species”, in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, volume 205, page 493
- Dawkins and Krebs (1979) have suggested that, unless predators are rare (Dawkins, 1982), prey should evolve more quickly than their predators due to stronger selection on the prey. This has been termed the “life-dinner” principle […]1992, Heather Joanne Henter, The ecological genetics of interactions between the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) and the parasitoid Aphidius ervi. PhD dissertation. Cornell University. page 8
Origin of life-dinner principle
Coined by British biologists Richard Dawkins and John Krebs in 1979, in reference to one of Aesop's fables (see the quotation below).
Questions about life-dinner principle
- What does life-dinner principle mean?
- Life-dinner principle means a principle of asymmetry in selective pressure between predators and prey.
- What part of speech is life-dinner principle?
- Life-dinner principle is a noun.
Words near life-dinner principle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: life-dinner principle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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