‘I've always been fascinated by birds for a variety of reasons but the most compelling is the sheer beauty of their appearance. Charles Darwin agreed and called birds the most...
‘I've always been fascinated by birds for a variety of reasons but the most compelling is the sheer beauty of their appearance. Charles Darwin agreed and called birds the most aesthetic of all creatures. So much so, he refined his theory of evolution by natural selection to propose that the aesthetic choice of females has led to the proliferation of pattern and colour combinations that define each species. This thesis of sexual selection has influenced much of my recent work. 'Red Queen Rules' refers to the metaphor that modern biologists have used to describe this ever-changing and continuous evolutionary 'arms race'. The title comes from Lewis Carroll's Red Queen who warns Alice that she will have to run as fast as she can, just to stay in the same place.'