Niche construction theory
- we think of an animal’s environment as including their surrounding plants, landscape, and other animals
- but, it’s important to note that animals change their environment with their behavior, such as eating plants and building nests
- NCT: animals do not passively live in environments, but also alter them
- e.g. beavers build dams on rivers
- e.g. some insects lay their eggs on animals that are food for the hatching larvae
- the offspring “inherit” this environment, an ecological inheritance, not a genetic inheritance
- thus, organisms can transmit modified environments/habitats to offspring, not just genes
- human culture is a type of ecological inheritance
- a feedback loop can cause traits affected by the niche-constructing traits to evolve
- traits can be adaptive in some environments but not in others (e.g. ability to eat purple berries on the island without purple berries)
- niche construction changes environments, thus making some traits adaptive that otherwise wouldn’t be adaptive
- e.g., creation of stone tools allows humans to hunt more foods, selecting for traits that can take advantage of these new foods
- even seemingly stable environments change in selection pressure due to niche construction
- e.g. when we invent water bottles, deserts become habitable even if the desert itself hasn’t changed
- realize that technology, broadly understood, is needed to keep us alive in the vast majority of the world; our ability to live almost anywhere reflects ways we construct niches in different environments
- other resources
- what’s an ecological niche?
- short excerpt on NCT from Dunbar, R., Barrett, L., & Lycett, J. (2005). Evolutionary psychology: A beginner’s guide. Oneworld.