Evolution! Do the deer shape the wolves or do the wolves shape the deer?

Slow inattentive deer get eaten. Faster deer survive.


Slower and unobservant wolves starve so faster wolves with good senses survive.


Wolves and deer, faster and smarter.





Now the big part of the question.





Is there a natural limit to this sort of vicious evolutionary cycle?Evolution! Do the deer shape the wolves or do the wolves shape the deer?
with any kind of evolutionary selection that exaggerates one trait to an extreme can go to far.





there is fossil evidence that the European version of the American elk did this very thing.





Elk have sexual selection. the bigger the antlers the better it competes for the females. the male who gets the females passes on his genetic traits, so he wins so to speak. therefore over generations the antlers get bigger on elk, because bigger is better. The European version did this to the point that his antlers were too large and he couldn't move through his wooded habitat well enough to survive and went extinct.





there is also evidence that there was an American ';cheetah'; to prey off the pronghorn. the current theory is that the pronghorn did just what you were talking about, and got faster, but the ';cheetah'; didnt make that jump quick enough.





what it takes to end the cycle is for there to be a surplus of predators and a shortage of prey, so all the ';weaker'; prey are exterminated by the surplus, and for the predators to continue to all pass on their genes. what this presents is several predators to your prey, but your prey is the best of the best, so next generations are only the best. if all the sudden the prey are just to fast your predator runs into problems because predator species are k selected(reproductive term) and don't bounce back from a dip very well, like prey species doEvolution! Do the deer shape the wolves or do the wolves shape the deer?
I really liked John R.'s answer too

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Only if the development of the traits under selection ultimately prove harmful to the organisms, and even then, selection can't work if the animals are able to mate before the harmful trait kills them.





For instance, there are species of birds in which the males develop tails in the breeding season that are so long and heavy that they are only able to flutter for short distances. They are incredibly easy prey for just about anything - but the females like the long tails, and enough of the super endowed males mate before being eaten that the genes continue to be selected for in the population.
Both. A change in one will affect the other.





Then they start experimenting with different things, like making them more agile or more sturdy.
It doesn't matter if you're a deer or a wolf-


You better be able to run fast.
In Alice Through the Looking Glass the Red Queen tells Alice ';you must run as fast as you can just to stay where you are.';





The species shape each other. As one develops an advantage the other will develop a countermeasure. Its a continuing evolutionary arms race just to keep things exactly the way they are.
There's probably some outside limit determined by the physiological capabilities of the animals involved, but you're not taking into acount that these things don't happen in a vacuum. Both deer and wolves have to deal with stresses and forces that come from everything else in their environment. Life's a continuous trade-off between ideal and expense; you try to get the best 'bargain' you can..