Two or more species experience adaptation to one another in a coevolutionary manner. This often seen in predator-prey systems.
A phenomenon of evolution in which two or more species adapt to one another in a coevolutionary manner.
In politics, an arms race is when two countries both improve their military power, each trying to get ahead of the other. In evolution, the phrase is used to describe two creatures co-evolving to keep up with each other. For example, gazelles are now very good at running away from cheetahs. But cheetahs are now very good at running after gazelles.
Massive military build-up, especially of nuclear weapons, by both the Soviet Union and the United States in an effort to gain military superiority.
an example of the escalation archetype
Two species changing in response to changes in the other, a typical predator - prey interaction. This is usually regarded as a negative-sum interaction, improvements cancel each other out.
An arms race occurs whenever two adversaries race each other to make sure that each has at least as many armaments as the other. This typically leads to an escalation spiral with each side building and/or acquiring more and more weapons in an effort to stay ahead of its enemy.
"Arms races are run in evolutionary time ... They consist of the improvement in one lineage's (say prey animals') equipment to survive, as a direct consequence of improvement in another (say the predators') lineage's evolving equipment. " Types of arms race are: asymmetric arms race; cyclical arms race; symmetric arms race; [See Chapter 7 of The Blind Watchmaker.
The term arms race in its original usage describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. For example, one such competition manifested itself in the rapid development by the United States and the Soviet Union of more and better nuclear weapons during the Cold War (see: nuclear arms race).