life-dinner principle

名词 n.

英文释义

名词 n.
  1. 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 of failure. Mutations that make foxes lose races against rabbits might therefore survive in the fox gene pool longer than mutations that cause rabbits to lose races can expect to survive in the rabbit gene pool.

词源

Coined by British biologists Richard Dawkins and John Krebs in 1979, in reference to one of Aesop's fables (see the quotation below).
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