Abstract
In the last decade, niche construction has been heralded as the neglected process in evolution. But niche construction is just one way in which the organism's interaction with and construction of the environment can have potential evolutionary significance. The constructed environment does not just select for, it also produces new variation. Nearly 3 decades ago, and in parallel with Odling-Smee's article ‘Niche-constructing phenotypes', West and King introduced the ‘ontogenetic niche’ to give the phenomena of exogenetic inheritance a formal name. Since then, a range of fields in the life sciences and medicine has amassed evidence that parents influence their offspring by means other than DNA (parental effects), and proposed mechanisms for how heritable variation can be environmentally induced and developmentally regulated. The concept of ‘developmental niche construction’ (DNC) elucidates how a diverse range of mechanisms contributes to the transgenerational transfer of developmental resources. My most central of claims is that whereas the selective niche of niche construction theory is primarily used to explain the active role of the organism in its selective environment, DNC is meant to indicate the active role of the organism in its developmental environment. The paper highlights the differences between the construction of the selective and the developmental niche, and explores the overall significance of DNC for evolutionary theory.
Highlights
In the last decade, niche construction has been heralded as the neglected process in evolution
My most central of claims is that whereas the selective niche of niche construction theory is primarily used to explain the active role of the organism in its selective environment, developmental niche construction’ (DNC) is meant to indicate the active role of the organism in its developmental environment
The most central of claims in this paper is that whereas niche construction theory (NCT) (SNC) explains the active role of the organism in its selective environment, DNC indicates the active role of the organism in its developmental environment
Summary
Recent years have seen the emergence of a range of approaches that challenge some basic assumptions of the modern evolutionary synthesis. The relationship between SNC and DNC may best be compared with the relationship between the modern synthesis and evolutionary developmental biology The latter provides the developmental mechanisms that connect the phenotype with the genotype, may account for the origin of variation, and highlight the effect of these variations on natural selection without directly affecting the construction of the selective niche. The theory of DNC integrates development as a contingent, constructive and emergent process of the interaction between developmental resources and the ecological context with the idea of inheritance as the transfer of essential developmental resources vital to the reconstruction of the generation’s life cycle Such a theory needs to have a balanced account of the robustness of the organismal organization, the generation of 2 novel variation, and its inheritance to the generation.
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