Abstract
Niche construction refers to the activities of organisms that bring about changes in their environments, many of which are evolutionarily and ecologically consequential. Advocates of niche construction theory (NCT) believe that standard evolutionary theory fails to recognize the full importance of niche construction, and consequently propose a novel view of evolution, in which niche construction and its legacy over time (ecological inheritance) are described as evolutionary processes, equivalent in importance to natural selection. Here, we subject NCT to critical evaluation, in the form of a collaboration between one prominent advocate of NCT, and a team of skeptics. We discuss whether niche construction is an evolutionary process, whether NCT obscures or clarifies how natural selection leads to organismal adaptation, and whether niche construction and natural selection are of equivalent explanatory importance. We also consider whether the literature that promotes NCT overstates the significance of niche construction, whether it is internally coherent, and whether it accurately portrays standard evolutionary theory. Our disagreements reflect a wider dispute within evolutionary theory over whether the neo-Darwinian synthesis is in need of reformulation, as well as different usages of some key terms (e.g., evolutionary process).
Highlights
Can the evolution of traits such as lactose tolerance be explained by standard evolutionary theory?
No Niche construction can lead to changes in the environment that either increase or decrease organism fitness
No Only natural selection leads to the appearance of organismal design
Summary
Niche construction is “the process whereby organisms, through their metabolism, their activities, and their choices, modify their own and/or each other’s niches” (Odling-Smee et al 2003, p. 419). Even after death niche construction continues: as a body decomposes, it will change the chemical composition of the earth around it This extremely broad definition was adopted deliberately (Odling-Smee 1988; Odling-Smee et al 2003), because the architects of NCT were very conscious of how seemingly trivial environmental impacts by organisms might be more important than they first appear. Good examples are the soil-generating consequences of snails that consume endolithic lichens and thereby support a desert ecosystem (Jones et al 1997), and the seabird guano that transforms island shrub to lush grassland (Croll et al 2005) Neither of these niche-constructing effects are adaptations (or extended phenotypes), yet both have major ecological, and plausibly evolutionary, consequences. Are its advocates correct to view niche construction as an evolutionary process, which changes evolutionary theory in fundamental ways? Or is it, at best, a (somewhat counterproductive) descriptive term, that refers to the effects that organisms have on environments (the skeptics’ view)?
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