Figure 1.

A schematic view of the transitional stages in exploiter-victim systems. (A) With distinguishable victims, the exploiter will diverge into specialists. (B) Exploiter preferences put directional selection on victims: for undefended to become similar to defended, and for defended to be dissimilar to undefended. This results in “red queen mimicry”, driven by the exploiters’ discrimination. We chose the Red Queen concept as a simile for the mimicry dynamics since the dynamics of the system forces the victims to evolve their signals rapidly in the exploiters’ perception landscape without affecting their relative situation since all victim strategies evolve at the same time and so do the perception landscape of the exploiters. (C) Defended and undefended victims become identical. Exploiter can no longer distinguish victims and becomes a generalist. (D) With exploiter generalists, there is no selection gradient on victims. Victims will drift apart as mimicry weakens. The process repeats itself.