Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus.

Abstract

Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution, reciprocal to the causal process of natural selection. It works by adding ecological inheritance, comprising the inheritance of natural selection pressures previously modified by niche construction, to genetic inheritance in evolution. Human niche construction modifies selection pressures in environments in ways that affect both human evolution, and the evolution of other species. Human ecological inheritance is exceptionally potent because it includes the social transmission and inheritance of cultural knowledge, and material culture. Human genetic inheritance in combination with human cultural inheritance thus provides a basis for gene-culture coevolution, and multivariate dynamics in cultural evolution. Niche construction theory potentially integrates the biological and social aspects of the human sciences. We elaborate on these processes, and provide brief introductions to each of the papers published in this theme issue.

Full text

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doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0306
, 785-792
366
2011 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
Jeremy Kendal, Jamshid J. Tehrani and John Odling-Smee
Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus


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Introduction
Human niche construction in
interdisciplinary focus
Jeremy Kendal1,*, Jamshid J. Tehrani1and John Odling-Smee2
1Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and Culture, Department of Anthropology, University of Durham,
South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
2School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, 51/53 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE, UK
Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution, reciprocal to the causal process of
natural selection. It works by adding ecological inheritance, comprising the inheritance of natural
selection pressures previously modified by niche construction, to genetic inheritance in evolution.
Human niche construction modifies selection pressures in environments in ways that affect both
human evolution, and the evolution of other species. Human ecological inheritance is exceptionally
potent because it includes the social transmission and inheritance of cultural knowledge, and
material culture. Human genetic inheritance in combination with human cultural inheritance
thus provides a basis for gene–culture coevolution, and multivariate dynamics in cultural evolution.
Niche construction theory potentially integrates the biological and social aspects of the human
sciences. We elaborate on these processes, and provide brief introductions to each of the papers
published in this theme issue.
Keywords: niche construction; gene–culture coevolution; cultural evolution; human evolution
1. INTRODUCTION
Niche-construction theory (NCT) originated as a
branch of evolutionary biology that emphasizes the
capacity of organisms to modify their environment
and thereby influence their own and other species’
evolution [1]. The defining characteristic of niche con-
struction is not the modification of environments per
se, but rather organism-induced changes in selection
pressures in environments [1]. The effects of niche
construction have been documented across a wide
range of species including animals manufacturing
nests, burrows and webs, and plants modifying nutri-
ent cycles. The papers presented in this special issue
explore the phenomenon in Homo sapiens, for whom
endogenous causes of evolutionary dynamics are
impossible to ignore.
NCT differs from standard evolutionary theory
(SET) in recognizing that the evolution of organisms
is co-directed by both natural selection and niche con-
struction. While genetic variation is subject to natural
selection through differential survival and reproductive
success, the selective environments themselves are
partly determined by modifications made by niche-
constructingorganisms.
natural selection and niche construction as reciprocal
causal processes in evolution, and treats the adapta-
tions of organisms as products of both processes [2].
HenceNCT recognizes
Evolution entails networks of causation and feed-
back in which previously selected organisms drive
environmentalchanges,
environments subsequently select for changes in
organisms.
NCT provides both a philosophical shift in the way
we view and understand evolutionary processes as well
as a testable scientific theory. While the effects of niche
construction on the evolutionary process have often
been neglected in the past, it is also important to
note that many aspects of NCT are already incorpor-
ated in standard theories of evolutionary biology,
ecology,developmentalbiology
sciences. However, rather than aiming just to relabel
or reclassify established theories such as gene–culture
coevolution or ecosystem engineering, NCT is put to
better use when formulating new hypotheses, or build-
ing a more general evolutionary framework within
which other theories can be subsumed. NCT provides
mechanisms by which currently disconnected bodies
of theory, such as evolutionary and developmental
biology (‘evo-devo’) [1,3,4], or human cultural evol-
ution and structuration theory ([5], see below) can
be united [6].
Here, we review the fundamental principles of con-
temporary NCT, initially in the context of biological
evolution, before showing how the theory incorporates
cultural evolutionary processes, and how it provides a
framework for consilience between the natural and
the social sciences [7]. Where appropriate, we give
short summaries of each of the contributing papers
in this theme issue.
andorganism-modified
andthehuman
* Author for correspondence (jeremy.kendal@durham.ac.uk).
One contribution of 13 to a Theme Issue ‘Human niche
construction’.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011) 366, 785–792
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2. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF NICHE
CONSTRUCTION
An early advocate of the niche construction perspec-
tive, Lewontin [8], neatly summarized the differences
between standard evolutionary theory and NCT in
two pairs of coupled differential equations. His first
pair (equations 2.1a,b) summarizes SET:
dO
dt¼ f ðO;EÞð2:1aÞ
and
dE
dt¼ gðEÞ:
ð2:1bÞ
In equation (2.1a), evolutionary change in organ-
isms, dO/dt, depends on both organisms’ states, O,
and environmental states, E. In equation (2.1b),
environmental change, dE/dt, depends exclusively on
environmental states. In general, organisms are not
treated as the cause of any evolutionarily significant
changes in their environments, with the exception of
cases such as frequency dependent selection, habitat
selection,maternalinheritance
Instead adaptive evolutionary change is assumed to
be governed exclusively by a single ‘causal arrow’,
natural selection.
However, SET underestimates the significance of
the fact that, to stay alive, organisms must be active
as well as reactive relative to their environments.
Organisms must gain resources from their external
environments by genetically informed, or in animals,
possibly brain informed,
random work [3]. They must perturb specific com-
ponents of their environments, often at locations
chosen by the organisms themselves, and they must
excrete detritus to their environments throughout
their lives [1]. Organisms are, therefore, compelled
to modify some natural selection pressures in their
environments by the accumulating consequences of
their activities. Lewontin captured this point by his
second pair (equations 2.2a,b) of equations that, in
effect, summarize NCT:
andcoevolution.
fuel consuming,non-
dO
dt¼ f ðO;EÞð2:2aÞ
and
dE
dt¼ gðO;EÞ:
ð2:2bÞ
In equation (2.2a) change in organisms, dO/dt, is again
assumed to depend on both organisms’ states and
environmental states, but in equation (2.2b) environ-
mental change, dE/dt, is now assumed to depend on
both environment states, and the niche-constructing
activities of organisms. Therefore, equation (2.2b)
introduces the second ‘causal arrow’ in evolution that
Odling-Smee [9] called niche construction.
The philosopher Godfrey-Smith [10] highlighted
the same distinction between SET and NCT by
describing SETas an ‘externalist’ theory of evolution.
SET is externalist because it seeks to explain the
internal properties of organisms, their adaptations,
exclusively in terms of properties of their external
environments, natural selection pressures. SET is
alsofullyconsistentwith
expounded by Mayr [11], who regarded natural selec-
tion as the ultimate cause of phenotypic characters
[12]. It is a view that devalues so-called proximate
causes, including developmental processes such as
learning, and human cultural processes in evolutionary
biology [13,14]. In SET, niche-construction effects
caused by developmental or proximate processes can
be regarded as the expression of phenotypic plasticity
[15], or sometimes as extended phenotypes [16],
but ultimately they still have to be explained by prior
natural selection [17].
For many purposes, SET is sufficient, but it is
insufficient when genetic selective environments are
modified as a function of phenotypic variation derived
from so-called proximate processes such as learning.
For example, human cultural variation, depending lar-
gely on differential social transmission of information
through social learning, may result in cultural niche-
constructing practices that modify the natural selection
of some human genes. As the selected genes may also
influence human cultural practices, the assignment of
‘causation’ becomes complex. NCT replaces SET’s
dichotomous proximate and ultimate distinction with
‘reciprocalcausation’.Adaptations
depend on natural selection that is modified by niche
construction, and niche construction that is selected
by natural selection [1,2]. In this light, niche construc-
tion is a mechanism of endogenous causation, reciprocal
to natural selection in the evolutionary process.
NCT asserts that, as a consequence of ancestral
niche construction, offspring inherit not only genes,
but an ecological inheritance, in the form of modified
local selective environments relative to genetic fitness.
Overall, each offspring actually inherits an initial
organism–environment relationship, or ‘niche’, from
its ancestors such that:
the traditionalview
oforganisms
NðtÞ ¼ hðO;EÞ;
ð2:3Þ
where N(t) represents the niche of a population of
organisms O at time t in an environment E. The
dynamics of N(t) are driven by the interaction
of bothpopulation-modifying
pressures in E, and by the environment-modifying
niche-constructing activities of populations, O [3].
In effect, this innovation replaces an ‘externalist’
theory by an ‘interactionist’ theory of evolution [10].
A niche is a neutral explanatory reference device. It
can capture reciprocal causation in evolution without
imposing any bias either in favour of natural selection
and against niche construction, or vice versa [3]. Con-
ceptually, it permits differential natural selection to be
treated no longer as a function of external environ-
ments, but, where appropriate, as a function of
organism–environment interactions.
In humans, much niche construction is influenced
by socially transmitted behaviour This observation
provoked Laland et al. [18] to propose a triple inheri-
tance evolutionary framework, delineating genetic,
cultural and ecological inheritance systems. Either
genetically or culturally influenced behaviours can
modify an environmental resource that subsequently
naturalselection
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contributes to a human ecological inheritance across
generations. In Laland et al.’s models the inherited
environmental resource was originally assumed to be
a material or energetic resource previously modified
by cultural niche construction. The inherited resource
might then affect either a human cultural process with-
out having any effect on human genetics, or it could
affect the natural selection of human genes including,
sometimes, the natural selection of genes that sub-
sequently influenced the
cultural processes [18–20].
Riede [21] in this issue argues that this triple inheri-
tance system (genes, culture and ecology) can provide
an effective framework to study archaeological data,
and he reviews a variety of cases where archaeology
provides signatures of human niche construction
activity within this system. A problem with using
the archaeological record is that it can be difficult
to distinguish causal relationships between niche-
constructing traditions and traditions selected as
consequences. To overcome this, Riede advocates
the use of phylogenetic comparative methods used to
study correlated evolution in biology. He demonstrates
the potential of this approach in a case study investi-
gating the causal relationships between traditions for
reindeer economies and dog use in Late Palaeolithic
populations of southern Scandinavia, using a cultural
phylogeny derived from artefact traditions.
Recently,Odling-Smee
Laland et al.’s triple inheritance system is unnecessarily
complicated and constraining. Instead, the original
cultural and ecological inheritance systems can be col-
lapsed into a single ecological inheritance system
consisting of informatic as well as physical material
and energy resources (figure 1). This simplification is
consistent with the idea that an individual can inherit
both a social and a physical niche that can include cul-
turally transmitted knowledge and behaviours, as well
as material culture, providing both culturally modified
sources of information and culturally modified phys-
icalresources,in an individual’s
environment [23,24].
Semantic information in an individual’s inherited
niche might take the form of a behaviour, demon-
strated by peers or elders, acquired through social
learning, such as subsistence practices or social
norms. Inherited physical resources could refer to
aspects of material culture, for example, nutritional
resources or tools, created through hunter–gathering
activity or farming. Many inherited niches obviously
consist of both informatic and physical resources: for
instance, farmed livestock and crops are not just nutri-
tionalresources,but also
information concerning subsistence practices.
While the proposed two-track human inheritance
system is consistent with Laland et al.’s [18] original
triple inheritance model, it is founded on general prin-
ciples that should apply to all organisms. Informally,
evolution based on the transmission of adaptive
semantic information or ‘know how’ requires energy
and material resources to pay for its physical acqui-
sition, storage (whether it be in RNA, DNA or
neurons etc.), use and transmission. Thus, there is a
natural delineation between the ecological inheritance
expression ofhuman
[3,22]suggested that
developmental
asourceofpublic
of informatic and energetic/physical resources. The
delineation assumes a working definition of semantic
information to be ‘anything that reduces uncertainty
about selective environments, relative to the fitness
interests of organisms’ [3, p. 184]. In addition, the
inherited ecological niche can include epigenetic infor-
matic and physical resources that lie internal to the
organism, such as the epigenetic inheritance of DNA
methylation patterns or the cytoplasmic inheritance
of nutritional resources [14,25]. These ‘evo-devo’ con-
siderations at the cellular level are beyond the scope of
this theme issue.
Systematic changes in developmental environments
can also result in systematic changes to the phenotypic
expression of developing organisms [26]. For example,
the construction of a developmental niche may modify
the shape of the relevant norm of reaction by reducing
the range of developmental environments to which
juveniles are exposed [2,6]. Animal burrows and
nests typically buffer variation in environmental vari-
ables such as temperature and humidity, while
human habitation and clothing provide similar roles.
Constructed human social environments may also
affect behavioural development. For instance, activi-
ties such as play and teaching can provide scaffolding
for learning [27]. Sterelney [28] in this issue argues
that the construction of developmental niche has been
critical for the evolution of behavioural modernity in
humans. In particular, he asserts that in the context
of demographic expansion in the Upper Palaeolithic,
the construction of structured learning environments,
which result in apprentice learning, allows high fidelity
cultural transmission of skill sets across generations,
resulting in the behaviourally modern cultures.
3. EVOLUTIONARY CONSEQUENCES OF
NICHE CONSTRUCTION
There has been considerable use of mathematical
models to examine the evolutionary consequences of
niche construction. These studies are often based on
natural selection
niche construction
genetic
inheritance
time
ecological
inheritance
semantic
information*
and
physical
resources**
natural selection
niche construction
Figure 1. A schematic diagram of NCT. *Includes cultural
knowledge; ** includes material culture.
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J. Kendal et al.
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a two-locus population genetic framework, where a
genetic (or cultural) trait at one locus affects the selec-
tive environment for recipient genetic (or cultural)
traits at the second locus [1,18,29–34]. The research
has revealed interesting evolutionary dynamics such
as momentum effects (populations continuing to
evolve in the same direction after selection has stopped
or reversed), time lags and inertia in response to selec-
tion, and sudden catastrophic responses to selection
[6,19,29,30,35,36]. The findings have also been con-
sistent with quantitative genetic analysis of indirect
genetic effects and maternal inheritance [37–40].
Cultural niche construction can affect either genetic
or cultural evolutionary dynamics (or both), depending
in part on the relative intensity of selection. Theory
suggeststhathumangene–culturecoevolutionwilltypi-
cally occur if a genetic selective environment remains
stable across sufficient generations for natural selection
toacton humangenetic variation [1].Humanevolution
may be unique insofar as our cultural capacities and
adaptive cultural niche-constructing activities reinforce
and amplify each other [1,19,41,42]. Thus, the
capacities for social, technical or cultural intelligence,
such as language and cooperation, have apparently
coevolvedwiththecumulativeculturalevolutionoftech-
nologies and social conventions that these capacities
afford [43–45].
In the current issue Rendell et al. [46] use a cellular
automaton model to explore local and global spatial
effects of cultural niche construction on gene–culture
coevolutionary dynamics. Similar to runaway sexual
selection, they explore coevolution through ‘hitchhik-
ing’ between cultural transmission of a behaviour
(equivalent to the mate preference) that modifies the
local selective environment of a genetic trait (equival-
ent to the preferred trait), even when there is an
inherent cost associated with either the cultural trait
or the genetic trait. They also examine the unique
spatial influence on the evolution, through secondary
hitchhiking, of a genetic trait that affects the capacity
for cultural niche construction, but bears an inherent
cost. The findings show the potential importance of
cultural niche construction influencing, for example,
genetic evolution of disease resistance and hominid
brain size.
Gene–culture coevolutionary dynamics are likely to
have been particularly important in recent human
evolution by influencing processes such as global dis-
persal and migration, language evolution, behavioural
modernity and sociality, the advent of agriculture,
and the evolution of human and domesticate diseases
[20,47,48]. This is consistent with evidence for
recent and rapid genetic selection, affecting character-
isticsincludingskinpigmentation,
dentition, brain function, metabolic efficiency and dis-
ease resistance [20,47]. The impact of cultural niche
constructionandgene–culture
dynamics on both human technological and social
evolution are considered in the current theme issue.
One of the most powerful examples of such changes
is in humans’ exploitation and modification of natural
resources. In this issue, Smith [49] draws on a wealth
of fascinating examples, largely from North America,
to develop a classification of niche-constructing
body shape,
coevolutionary
activities, used by small-scale human societies, to pro-
duce food and raw material resources from wild flora
and fauna. He highlights how the scheme distinguishes
particular characteristics of wild taxa that make them
likely targets for niche construction, as well as the
proactive impact that humans have had on their own
subsequent resource selection as a function of yields.
Rowley-Conwy & Layton [50] in this issue contrast
the stability of constructed niches by hunter–gatherers
with constructed niches during the advent of agricul-
ture. Considering a wide variety of plant manipulation
and hunting activity, they show how hunter–gatherers
can proactively alter both the ecological stability and
evolutionary dynamics of the affected species. The
authors examine the role of niche construction in
the development and geographical expansion of both
cereal and livestock agriculture, and highlight the
feedback effects of population expansion on niche
instability.
Gerbault et al. [51] in this issue review the current
understanding of perhaps the most well-cited case of
gene–culture coevolution, that of lactase persistence
and dairy farming. Their paper takes an interdisci-
plinary approach, considering new genetic data,
archaeological evidence and simulation modelling to
explore how this coevolutionary process took place.
Focusing on the European Neolithic transition, includ-
ing the spread of animal domestication and uptake of
dairy farming, Gerbault et al. synthesize these data to
giveacontemporaryexplanationfor theobserveddistri-
bution of lactase persistence, highlighting the role of
both demography and niche construction.
The role of gene–culture coevolution on the evol-
ution of human sociality is explored in this issue by
Gintis [52]. This paper provides a formal argument
that culture is not a by-product of genetic evolution,
but rather that culturally constituted aspects of the
social environment have driven the genetic evolution
of predispositions for cognitive features such as proso-
cial emotions and moral cognition. The paper draws
on both theoretical and experimental literature to
support the case for the impact of gene–culture coevo-
lution on, for instance, the internalization of norms,
altruism and character virtues.
The theme of human sociality is continued in this
issue by Ihara [53], who develops a mathematical
model to examine how culture-dependent discriminate
sociality could have evolved by gene–culture coevolu-
tion. Using the scenario of a Hawk–Dove game to
elicit resource competition, Ihara shows how a culturally
transmitted trait can alter the selective environment to
favour the genetic evolution of culture-dependent dis-
criminators that exercise either in-group favouritism or
prestige bias as a function of the cultural trait distri-
bution. Ramifications for the evolution of discriminate
sociality include the intriguing possibility that the
evolutionof thiscapacityinHomo sapiens, but not Nean-
derthals,contributedtotheircontrastingfatesduringthe
Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition.
Ihara notes that his model is also consistent with a
cultural practice influencing the cultural, rather than
genetic, evolution of discriminate sociality. In general,
it is probably more common for cultural niche con-
struction to result in a cultural, rather than a genetic
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response. Feasibly, trans-generational cultural niche
construction can modify environments in ways that
favour ever-more culture, causing cultural niche con-
struction tobecome
[1,18,23,43,54]. This process may have led to the
accumulation of complex social norms and complex
cultural knowledge in behaviourally modern humans.
Fast cultural responses to a culturally modified
niche can also render genetic responses unnecessary
[19]. For example, human-induced pollution may
provoke new technology to remove environmental
contaminants, thus counteracting the change in the
genetic selective environments for species across rel-
evant ecosystems.Here,
activity could be due to ‘inceptive’ niche construction,
while the cultural response is likely to depend on
‘counteractive’ niche construction. Similarly, drug
treatments to prevent diseases may relax genetic selec-
tion for disease resistance or susceptibility. For
instance, Boni & Feldman [55] develop a mathemat-
ical model to examine how antibiotic use, favouring
selection of resistant bacterial strains, can result in cul-
tural selection for the avoidance of antibiotic use. This
example is also notable as a case of interspecific niche
construction, as the cultural and genetic evolution of
antibiotic use and bacterial strains, respectively,
modify the selective environments of one another.
NCT may be particularly relevant to the dynamics
of cultural traits because the theory can incorporate
the effects of cultural backgrounds, or environments,
as components of constructed niches, affecting selec-
tion between cultural variants [56]. This point is
illustrated by theoretical studies of fertility control
and the demographic transition. Ihara & Feldman
[31] examined the effects of a preference for a high
or low level of education on the evolution of small
family size. They assumed that the average level of
education can affect the degree to which traits are
transmittedobliquely rather
example, from teachers rather than from parents, to
pupils. They found that a preference for small family
size can evolve if individuals with few offspring are
more likely to transmit their fertility preference to the
offspring generation than are individuals with a high
number of offspring. This study revealed the classic
niche-construction characteristic of a time-lag between
the increase of the average level of education and a
subsequent decline in fertility: a pattern that is consist-
entwith, andmaypartially explain,
demographic transition. In a related study, Borenstein
et al. [34] developed a metapopulation cultural niche-
construction model where the frequency of a trait,
such as the preference for a high level of education,
affects the construction of a social interaction network,
through which other cultural traits may percolate.
They found that local between-population cultural
niche construction could account for the spread of
reduced fertility preference across countries occurring
at ever-lower levels of development [57].
Lipatov et al. [58] in this issue distinguish between a
social niche, referring to the structure of expected
social roles, and a cultural niche, referring to a set of
socially transmitted symbolic or meaningful ideas.
Drawing on rich ethnographic data relating to a shift
ever-morepowerful
the initial detrimental
than vertically,for
a typical
from uxorilocal to virilocal marriage practices in early
twentieth century Tawain, they develop a mathemat-
ical model to explore the interaction between social
structure and cultural ideas. Lipatov et al. show how
a disjuncture between practice and belief can be
affected by changes in the economy, specifically the
proportion of the population wealthy enough to pay
the observed brideprice in the virilocal system.
Shennan [59] in this issue chooses to focus on the
inheritance of material wealth, such as property, as a
constructed niche or resource afforded by private
property rights that develop with agriculturalist and
pastoralist societies. Shennan explores the influence
of this niche on variation and stratification of
reproductive strategies, and in addition, uses McNa-
mara & Houston’s [60] model for non-genetic
inheritance of phenotypic quality to bring insight to
the importance of inter-generational transfers of land
wealth on long-term reproductive success.
4. INTEGRATING HUMAN, BIOLOGICAL
AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Human and social scientists have been reticent to
make use of evolutionary theory in the past for several
reasons. One is that human scientists are predomi-
nantly interested in human behaviour and culture,
rather than genes, and as a consequence they have
little use for a standard theory of evolution that is
exclusively driven by natural selection acting on gen-
etic variation.A second
adaptationist account of behaviour derived from
SET, for example in evolutionary psychology, is
regarded somewhere between oversimplification and
misrepresentation [61].
NCTaddresses both these issues by accounting for
the proactive role of human development and cultural
processes in human evolution through the modifi-
cation andecological
environments. The inherited selective environment
can pertain to any form of ecologically inherited
semantic information, including culturally inherited
information, as well as physical environments. This
enables human scientists to explore human phenotypic
variation from the perspective of genetic, ontogenetic
and cultural processes operating at distinct, but
richly interconnected levels [62], as exemplified in
many of the papers in the current issue.
Another source of reticence is the perception among
social scientists that evolutionary theory cannot
account for cultural diversity, but only for pan-
human traits. It is, therefore, unable to offer social
scientists any insights into the phenomena that primar-
ily interestthem.However,
framework for the quantitative examination of cultural
diversity through modification of cultural and social
selective environments to affect local cultural histories
and promote additional cultural diversity, where it is
unnecessary to consider genetic fitness consequences
[63]. Furthermore, it is now well established that a
quantitative evolutionary model can be of great utility
to study cultural diversity [56,64–66].
There are also some parallels between the evol-
utionary framework offered by NCT and some recent
reasonis thatan
inheritance of selective
NCT providesa
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J. Kendal et al.
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developments in social theory that have tried to trans-
cend the classic dichotomy between structure (the
rules and institutions of societies) and agency (the
intentions, motivations and performances of individ-
uals). So-called ‘structuration theory’ [5] is based on
a similar premise to niche construction in that it
emphasizes that social structures are both the context
and the consequences of individual actions. Cultural
meanings, moral orders and the distribution of econ-
omic and political power constrain agency and
inform its goals, but they also depend on it for their
reproduction. Humans’ ability to assess the effective-
ness of their behaviours (‘reflexive monitoring’)
allows them to manipulate and occasionally even to
transform structure, which can have intended and
unintended consequences for their and others’ future
behaviour.
The importance of evaluative and purposeful
agency has clear implications for our understanding
of human niche construction, as Lansing & Fox [67]
discuss in their contribution to this issue. They
describe how the engineered landscape of Balinese
rice terraces is governed principally by local farming
associations responding to the ecologically inherited
conflicting interests of water availability and pest con-
trol. The development of rice cults has played a crucial
role in coordinating farmers’ behaviours, but has also
generated a wide range of new cultural representations
and paradigms, including the agricultural calendar,
cosmological system and religious consciousness.
5. CONCLUSION
We can gain a richer understanding of evolutionary
processes by accounting explicitly for phenotypic
modification of selective environments that can result
in the ecological inheritance of semantic and physical
resources (figure 1). Thus, niche construction pro-
vides an endogenous causal role in evolution that is
reciprocal to that of selection. In recent human evol-
ution, the most potent human contributions to
human ecological inheritance have probably occurred
through cultural inheritance. If so, that requires the
investigation of human evolution in the context of a
theory of gene–culture coevolution that explicitly
includes cultural niche construction. One potential
advantage of combining NCT with gene–culture co-
evolutionary theory is that it should make gene–culture
coevolutionary models more empirically tractable by
including NCT’s mechanisms of niche construction
and ecological inheritance, both of which are open to
investigation [1].
Niche construction provides a powerful framework
for bringing together different perspectives on the
role of culture as a selective force in human evolution
that have developed in recent decades [68]. When
framed in terms of SET, these approaches often
seem to be in conflict with one another—for example,
over the question of the extent to which culture is
‘adaptive’ [69]. In NCT, these differences largely dis-
appear. Rather than focusing on the adaptiveness of
cultural behaviours relative to an external environ-
ment, NCT recognizes that culture is a crucial part
of our ‘ecological inheritance’. Thus, over the last
100 000 years or so, humans have become increasingly
reliant on physical and semantic resources that have
been shaped by the cultural activities of preceding gen-
erations—from domesticated animals and tool-making
to writing, the built environment and even religious
cosmologies. Such inventions have in various ways
both depended on and then subsequently shaped the
evolution of genetic and other cultural traits. Niche
construction provides a unique paradigm for studying
these relationships that explicitly recognizes the
reciprocal influences of cultural evolution, cultural
evolvability and gene–cultural evolution on one
another.
Empirical investigations will not be easy, however.
The eco-evolutionary feedbacks generated by cultural
niche construction are typically complicated, and
they are likelyto demand
approaches [70]. At present, different disciplines, ran-
ging from population geneticists, ecologists and
molecular biologists to anthropologists, archaeologists
and economists, contribute different datasets and
different theoretical interpretations to different arcs
of these feedback cycles. In future, a better under-
standing of human evolution may only be achieved
by closer between-discipline cooperation, and the
mutual sharing and integration of different bodies of
theory from different disciplines [20]. This promises
to be an illuminating, though challenging, enterprise.
The papers represented in this issue constitute an
encouraging start.
multi-disciplinary
This theme issue is borne out of an interdisciplinary meeting
on human niche construction hosted by the Institute of
Advanced Study and the Department of Anthropology at
Durham University, in association with AHRC Centre for
the Evolution of Cultural Diversity. We thank them for
their financialand academic
fundamental to the development of this theme issue. We
also thank Kevin Laland for his helpful comments on an
early draft. Finally, we thank all the contributors to this
theme issuefor their enthusiasm,
cooperation. J.K. and J.T. are funded by RCUK Academic
Fellowships.
support,which was
hard workand
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