Niche Construction
Cf. habitat construction as a synonym. Also place making, placemaking.
Sultan, Sonia E. Organism and Environment: Ecological Development, Niche Construction, and Adaption. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Organism’s niche-constructing activities can influence biotic and abiotic selection pressures on the organism itself, in a type of diffuse coevolution.
All niches are in some way constructed because they are a result of processes, the same must be true for places.
Organisms inevitably modify their environments via:
- physical
- by their presence
- resource uptake
- waste deposition
It is possible to measure these impacts as external to organisms but they result from and contribute to the features of the organisms themselves including eco-devo responses and adaptive functionality.
Cf. also 'cultural niche construction'.
Humans as drivers of nonhuman evolution.
Biogeomorphology
As a form of niche construction and habitat construction. Cf. anthropogeomorphology.
Viles, Heather, and Martin Coombes. ‘Biogeomorphology in the Anthropocene: A Hierarchical, Traits-Based Approach’. Geomorphology 417 (2022): 108446. https://doi.org/10/grztxb.
Implications
Importance of inclusive, holistic governance and design.
Importance of continuous designing, integrated life cycle tracking.
Human Niche Construction
Kendal, Jeremy R., Jamshid J. Tehrani, and John Olding-Smee, eds. ‘Human Niche Construction’. Special issue. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366, no. 1566 (2011): 783–934.
Ellis, Erle C., Peter J. Richerson, Alex Mesoudi, Jens-Christian Svenning, John Odling-Smee, and William R. Burnside. ‘Evolving the Human Niche’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 31 (2016): E4436–E4436. https://doi.org/10/gfvhrp.
Altman, Arie, and Alex Mesoudi. ‘Understanding Agriculture within the Frameworks of Cumulative Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Co-Evolution, and Cultural Niche Construction’. Human Ecology 47, no. 4 (2019): 483–97. https://doi.org/10/gf6zxz.
Sullivan, Alexis P., Douglas W. Bird, and George H. Perry. “Human Behaviour as a Long-Term Ecological Driver of Non-Human Evolution.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, no. 3 (2017): 1–11. https://doi.org/10/gbrz7b.
Urban Evolution
Szulkin, Marta, Jason Munshi-South, and Anne Charmantier, eds. Urban Evolutionary Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
References
The notion of niche construction (processual) is the opposite ontology to that of extended phenotype (substantialist).
Dupré, John, and Daniel Nicholson. ‘A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology’. In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré, 3–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Odling-Smee, F. John, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman. Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
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