Niche Construction Theory Research Articles

Imagining a new ‘abnormal’ amidst COVID-19: Seeking guidance from evolutionary anthropology and theology

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is responsible for the large-scale devastation experienced all over the world. This ‘invisible stranger’ interrupting our daily lives is highlighting in a new and acute way the vulnerability of the human race. Life as we knew it is being changed forever. COVID-19 also exposed the injustices embedded in social structures all over the world. What will life with and after COVID-19 look like in South Africa? The pandemic reveals that South Africa is not the fair and just society we hoped for since the transition to a democratic country in 1994. In light of this, we should be preparing ourselves for the new ‘abnormal’ as what seemed normal was problematic and therefore, truly abnormal. Seeking guidance from evolutionary anthropology, this article will explore whether the evolutionary story of Homo sapiens might offer us insights on how to successfully navigate the multiple challenges COVID-19 unmasks and also brings forth. A discussion on the evolutionary history of homo sapiens within the context of niche construction theory reveals that our unique capacity for imagination and creative collaboration made us successful as a species. It is these capacities for imagination and cooperation that might facilitate us in successfully imagining and thereafter living the new ‘abnormal’. In this article, the question of imaging the new ‘abnormal’ will be explored.Contribution: By creatively integrating the perspectives evident in this research, this article explores whether the Prophets of Israel might offer a feasible paradigm to determine coordinates for the imagined new ‘abnormal’ to be a more fair and just society.

A quantitative analysis of intensification in the ethnographic record.

The intensification of food production plays a central role in the evolution of complex human societies. However, it is unclear whether the standard model of intensification is theoretically or empirically justified. This leaves social scientists unable to make reasonable inferences about the relationship between intensification and the evolution of social complexity in past societies. To remedy this problem, I derive a model of intensification from human macroecology, settlement scaling theory, human behavioural ecology, cultural evolutionary theory and niche construction theory. The standard and cultural niche construction models are formalized and their predictions are tested using a comprehensive ethnographic dataset that describes food production in 40 human societies, ranging in complexity from foraging bands to agricultural states. Analysis of the ethnographic record suggests that we reject the standard model and tentatively accept the cultural niche construction model. I attempt to demonstrate the broader utility of the cultural niche construction model as a framework that may help explain the transition from small-scale to large-scale complex societies.

Historical Ecology of Scandinavian Infield Systems

Infield systems originated during the early Iron Age and existed until the 19th century, although passing many transitions and changes. The core features of infield systems were enclosed infields with hay-meadows and crop fields, and unenclosed outland mainly used for livestock grazing. We examine the transitions and changes of domesticated landscapes with infield systems using the framework of human niche construction, focusing on reciprocal causation affecting change in both culture and environment. A first major transition occurred during the early Middle Ages, as a combined effect of a growing elite society and an increased availability of iron promoted expansion of villages with partly communal infields. A second major transition occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries, due to a then recognized inefficiency of agricultural production, leading to land reforms. In outlands, there was a continuous expansion of management throughout the whole period. Even though external factors had significant impacts as well, human niche construction affected a range of cultural and environmental features regarding the management and structure of domesticated landscapes with infield systems. Thus, niche construction theory is a useful framework for understanding the historical ecology of infield systems.

Social memory and niche construction in a hypervariable environment.

Communities in southwest Madagascar have co-evolved with a hypervariable environment and climate. The paleoclimate record reflects major fluctuations in climatic conditions over the course of Holocene human settlement. Archeological evidence indicates short-term occupations of sites, suggesting that frequent residential mobility and flexible subsistence strategies have been central features of life on the southwest coast for millennia. Today, despite rapid changes linked to globalization and increasing market integration, mobility and subsistence flexibility remain key to the lives of communities of the region. In this article, we advocate closer consideration of the social dimensions of the human niche, and their inextricable links to the biophysical world. Specifically, we explore the theoretical implications of applying a Niche Construction Theory framework to understanding the role of social memory in constructing the human niche of SW Madagascar. We look at how social memory facilitates mobility, resource use, and the creation and maintenance of social identities and ties among communities of foragers, farmers, herders, and fishers living under hypervariable climatic conditions. We conducted an extensive oral history survey in SW Madagascar between 2017 and 2018. We interviewed over 100 elders from 32 different communities. Our analysis of the oral history archive resulted in the development of a theoretical model of human niche construction centered on the maintenance and transmission of social memory. We argue that social memory and the ability to transmit oral histories of exchange, reciprocity, and cooperation, as well as ecological knowledge are key adaptive mechanisms that facilitate mobility and access to resources in a hypervariable environment. The preservation and transmission of oral histories and ecological knowledge are thus critical to future resilience and sustainability.

Using niche construction theory to generate testable foraging hypotheses at Liang Bua.

Niche construction theory (NCT) has emerged as a promising theoretical tool for interpreting zooarchaeological material. However, its juxtaposition against more established frameworks like optimal foraging theory (OFT) has raised important criticism around the testability of NCT for interpreting hominin foraging behavior. Here, we present an optimization foraging model with NCT features designed to consider the destructive realities of the archaeological record after providing a brief review of OFT and NCT. Our model was designed to consider a foragers decision to exploit an environment given predation risk, mortality, and payoff ratios between different ecologies, like more-open or more-forested environments. We then discuss how the model can be used with zooarchaeological data for inferring environmental exploitation by a primitive hominin, Homo floresiensis, from the island of Flores in Southeast Asia. Our example demonstrates that NCT can be used in combination with OFT principles to generate testable foraging hypotheses suitable for zooarchaeological research.

Operationalizing niche construction theory with stone tools.

One of the greatest difficulties with evolutionary approaches in the study of stone tools (lithics) has been finding a mechanism for tying culture and biology in a way that preserves human agency and operates at scales that are visible in the archaeological record. The concept of niche construction, whereby organisms actively construct their environments and change the conditions for selection, could provide a solution to this problem. In this review, we evaluate the utility of niche construction theory (NCT) for stone tool archaeology. We apply NCT to lithics both as part of the "extended phenotype" and as residuals or precipitates of other niche-constructing activities, suggesting ways in which archaeologists can employ niche construction feedbacks to generate testable hypotheses about stone tool use. Finally, we conclude that, as far as its applicability to lithic archaeology, NCT compares favorably to other prominent evolutionary approaches, such as human behavioral ecology and dual-inheritance theory.

Human behavioral ecology and niche construction.

We examine the relationship between niche construction theory (NCT) and human behavioral ecology (HBE), two branches of evolutionary science that are important sources of theory in archeology. We distinguish between formal models of niche construction as an evolutionary process, and uses of niche construction to refer to a kind of human behavior. Formal models from NCT examine how environmental modification can change the selection pressures that organisms face. In contrast, formal models from HBE predict behavior assuming people behave adaptively in their local setting, and can be used to predict when and why people engage in niche construction. We emphasize that HBE as a field is much broader than foraging theory and can incorporate social and cultural influences on decision-making. We demonstrate how these approaches can be formally incorporated in a multi-inheritance framework for evolutionary research, and argue that archeologists can best contribute to evolutionary theory by building and testing models that flexibly incorporate HBE and NCT elements.

Three Kinds of Niche Construction

Niche construction theory concerns how organisms can change selection pressures by altering the feature–factor relationship between themselves and their environment. These alterations are standardly understood to be brought about through two kinds of organism–environment interaction: perturbative and relocational niche construction. We argue that a reconceptualization is needed on the grounds that if a niche is understood as the feature–factor relationship, then there are three fundamental ways in which organisms can engage in niche construction: constitutive, relational, and external niche construction. We further motivate our reconceptualization by showing some examples of organismic activities that fall outside of the current categorization of niche construction, but nonetheless should be included. We end by discussing two objections to niche construction and show how our reconceptualization helps to undercut these objections.

Resisters, Vacillators or Laggards? Reconsidering the First Farmer-Herders in Prehistoric Egypt

This article discusses the diffusion of food production from the Levant to Egypt in the Early–Middle Holocene. It attempts to explain how the diffusion and adoption of food production occurred in Egypt in light of optimal foraging theory, niche construction theory and innovation diffusion models. It disputes an old argument that Southwest Asian domesticates appeared late in Egypt and played only a minor role in its inhabitants’ subsistence. The primary focus is on the Fayum in northern Egypt, where the earliest-dated Southwest Asian domesticated cereal remains in Egypt were found together with cultivation-related tools and facilities. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the beginning of food production in the Fayum was not as late as previously thought, and that the subsequent development of food production should be seen as a response to the increasing imbalance between the growing human population and the limited wild food resources available in the Middle Holocene. Lithic evidence strongly indicates that people in the Fayum exerted every possible effort to make food production feasible and efficient with the aid of technology in the course of a millennium, starting in the early-to-mid 6th millennium BC.

Genes, culture, and the human niche: An overview.

The sharp distinction between biological traits and culturally based traits, which had long been standard in evolutionary approaches to behavior, was blurred in the early 1980s by mathematical models that allowed a co-dependent evolution of genetic transmission and cultural information. Niche-construction theory has since added another contrast to standard evolutionary theory, in that it views niche construction as a cause of evolutionary change rather than simply a product of selection. While offering a new understanding of the coevolution of genes, culture, and human behavior, niche-construction models also invoke multivariate causality, which require multiple time series to resolve. The empirical challenge lies in obtaining time-series data on causal pathways involved in the coevolution of genes, culture, and behavior. This is a significant issue in archeology, where time series are often sparse and causal behaviors are represented only by proxies in the material record.

Applied Model of E-Learning in the Framework of Education for Sustainable Development

Education for sustainable development is an evolving concept aimed at providing an understanding of the relationship between sustainable development issues and the development of knowledge, skills, perspectives and values, which will enable people of all ages to commit themselves to creating a sustainable future. The aim of the study is the development of a widely applicable model of e-learning, which consists of seven consecutive levels of professional and personal development and is conceptually associated with a self-regulation strategy. The methodological core of such model creation is the theory of niche construction. Its application to the understanding of the systemic educational process allowed the assumption that, under the evolutionary pressure of the educational environment, a person is engaged in self-learning and self-development processes. Thus, needing to adapt to the educational niche’s interaction, the individual affects its development through active inclusion in the training process, showing a personal evolutionary impulse. The system, in turn, affects one’s individual growth through the socialization of his/her personal and professional qualities. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the proposed widely applicable, presumably universal model of distance education, which consists of seven levels of professional development. The results show progress in students’ mastery of skills, which are an integral part of education for sustainable development (ESD), namely, foresight, critical thinking and reflection, systemic thinking, building partnerships, and participating in decision-making. This article also demonstrates the existing functionality of platforms that technologically support the educational process, indicates their strengths and defines areas for further improvement and development within the framework regarding the concept of education for sustainable development. The study outcomes confirm the effectiveness of a universal distance education model for the stable professional growth of tourism and hospitality staff. Thus, it is advisable to implement the model’s conceptual structure into educational programs of modern e-learning systems. Supposed universality of the model opens up the possibility of its use in almost all fields for training personnel.

Renegotiating organisational crisis management in urban tourism: strategic imperatives of niche construction

PurposeThis paper aims to respond to the strong calls for interdisciplinary solutions to address the many and varied challenges that major disasters create in urban (tourism) spaces, and provide a holistic conceptualisation of organisational responses to disruptions in the external business environment. It argues that organisations need to actively (re)formulate a sustainable business proposition to passively adapt to environmental conditions and modify the selective environment.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a qualitative approach to introducing and examining the concepts and theoretical constructs underpinning the proposed conceptual schemata. The content-driven inductive approach used here is based on an extensive review of the disaster recovery, crisis management, entrepreneurial strategy and urban tourism literature with a focus on organisational perspectives. It systematically brings together the theories and research findings from these separate strands of literature.FindingsWhile the extant literature focuses on the importance of effective adaptability to survive and thrive in environmental uncertainties, some aspects of the relevant evolutionary processes are not addressed in the context of urban tourism. Indeed, a systematic approach that questions how urban tourism and hospitality businesses react to crises has been long overdue. This paper, therefore, introduces niche construction theory (NCT) as an alternative and proposes an integrated framework to understand the environmental conditions of urban tourism and organisational evolution during post-disaster turbulence.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed model emerging from a multidisciplinary literature review acknowledges boundary conditions in the tourism industry-specific interpretation of a crisis situation. The tenets of NCT need to be adopted flexibly rather than as part of a strictly prescriptive process to allow for all aspects of the related business responses to play out and become exposed to the emerging selection pressures.Practical implicationsThe argument underpinned by the theoretical constructs of niche construction encourages and offers a framework for practitioners to actively (re)formulate business proposition and (re)construct organisational niche to survive post-disaster turbulence in the business environment and exert influence over their own evolution.Originality/valueThis paper offers different angles, filters and lenses for constructing and interpreting knowledge of organisational evolution in the context of crisis management. The conceptual schema (Figure 2) emerged as a novel contribution itself providing a necessary lens to interpret the empirical data and understand the complexities of the organisational responses to the disruptive post-disaster turbulence in an urban tourism business environment.

(Re)Creating spaces for tourism: Spatial effects of the 2010/ 2011 Christchurch earthquakes

Abstract This paper applies an economic geographical perspective and Niche Construction Theory (NCT) to the spatial effects of the Christchurch earthquakes on the city's tourism and hospitality spaces. An analysis of policy and planning documents, relevant reports, and twenty-four semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders forms the empirical basis. Niche Construction Theory (NCT) offers an analytical framework to interpret the environmental selection pressures and key stakeholders' responses in the evolving environment. This paper illustrates the spatial reconstruction processes pertaining to urban tourism and the related hospitality industry after a major natural disaster. Emerging themes include displacement and relocation, demographic changes and market shifts for hospitality businesses.

A Clear Past and a Murky Future: Life in the Anthropocene on the Pampana River, Sierra Leone

The impacts of human activities on ecosystems are significantly increasing the rate of environmental change in the earth system, reshaping the global landscape. The rapid rate of environmental change is disrupting the ability of millions of people around the globe to live their everyday lives and maintain their human niche. Evidence suggests that we have entered (or created) a new epoch, the Anthropocene, which is defined as the period in which humans and human activities are the primary drivers of planetary change. The Anthropocene denotes a global shift, but it is the collective of local processes. This is our frame for investigating local accounts of human-caused disruptive environmental change in the Pampana River in Tonkolili District, Northern Province, Sierra Leone. Since the end of the Sierra Leonean civil war in 2002, the country has experienced a rapid increase in extractive industries, namely mining. We explored the effects of this development by working with communities along the Pampana River in Tonkolili, with a specific focus given to engaging local fishermen through ethnographic interviews (N = 21 fishermen and 33 non-fishermen), focus group discussions (N = 21 fishermen), and participant observation. We deployed theoretical and methodological frameworks from human niche construction theory, complex adaptive systems, and ethnography to track disruptive environmental change in and on the Pampana from upstream activities and the concomitant shifts in the local human niche. We highlight the value of integrating ethnographic methods with human evolutionary theory, produce important insights about local human coping processes with disruptive environmental change, and help to further account for and understand the ongoing global process of human modification of the earth system in the Anthropocene.

Niche construction theory can link bark beetle-fungus symbiosis type and colonization behavior to large scale causal chain-effects.

Bark beetles form a variety of symbioses with fungi. Recent studies reveal how the fungi influence beetle nutrition and detoxify tree defenses and provide insight into why these symbioses vary so greatly in their outcomes, not only for host and symbiont, but also for the forest ecosystems within which they exist. Here, I review recent advances in our knowledge of these systems. I then introduce how niche construction theory can provide a framework to use this knowledge to better understand how different symbiosis types result in a gradient of ecosystem effects ranging from massive and durable to those of little ecological consequence.

Argumentation Evolved: But How? Coevolution of Coordinated Group Behavior and Reasoning

Rational agency is of central interest to philosophy, with evolutionary accounts of the cognitive underpinnings of rational agency being much debated. Yet one building block—our ability to argue—is less studied, except Mercier and Sperber’s argumentative theory (Mercier and Sperber in Behav Brain Sci 34(02):57–74, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x10000968, 2011, in The enigma of reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2017). I discuss their account and argue that it faces a lacuna: It cannot explain the origin of argumentation as a series of small steps that reveal how hominins with baseline abilities of the trait in question could turn into full-blown owners of it. This paper then provides a first sketch of the desired evolutionary trajectory. I argue that reasoning coevolves with the ability to coordinate behavior. After that, I establish a model based on niche construction theory. This model yields a story with following claims. First, argumentation came into being during the Oldowan period as a tool for justifying information ‘out of sight’. Second, argumentation enabled hominins to solve collective action problems with collaborators out of sight, which stabilized argumentative practices eventually. Archeological findings are discussed to substantiate both claims. I conclude with outlining changes resultant from my model for the concept of rational agency.

Anthropogenic forests, arboriculture, and niche construction in the Marquesas Islands (Polynesia)

In the Marquesas Islands, topographically rugged and prone to droughts, the subsistence economy at Western contact was strongly focused on arboriculture. Drawing on niche construction theory, we detail the socio-natural processes that gave rise to this cultivation system using the largest Polynesian archaeobotanical study to date. Inceptive, counter-active, and proactive niche construction was evidenced over six centuries of human occupation. Two 13th century tree translocations were identified: candlenut (Aleurites moluccana) and breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). Establishment of these and other crops was accompanied by extensive forest clearance and repetitive burning—indicative of shifting cultivation. These activities brought consequential changes to native coastal and lowland vegetation, and extinctions of indigenous forest and bird species. Fifteenth-century counter-active niche construction involved the rapid dispersal and increasing uptake of tree cultivation (especially breadfruit) within and across valleys, and diversification of the tree crop inventory. The advantages of breadfruit cultivation—nutritional, economic, ecological, and geomorphic—were considerable and from the mid-17th century arboriculture came to dominate the Marquesan economy, perhaps accelerated by unpredictable climatic conditions. Six centuries of niche construction created an array of novel selective conditions, invoking evolutionary responses in Marquesan people, flora, and fauna, and fostering a unique ecological inheritance for future generations.

Cognitive confinement: theoretical considerations on the construction of a cognitive niche, and on how it can go wrong

This paper aims to elucidate a kind of ignorance that is more fundamental than a momentary lack of information, but also not a kind of ignorance that is built into the subject’s cognitive apparatus such that the subject can’t do anything about it (e.g. color blindness). The paper sets forth the notion of cognitive confinement, which is a contingent, yet relatively stable state of being structurally or systematically unable to gain information from an environment, determined by patterns of interaction between the subject and the world. In order to unpack the idea of cognitive confinement the paper discusses niche construction theory, and then, in greater detail, the notion of cognitive niche once proposed by John Tooby and Irven DeVore. Cognitive confinement is here imagined as a pathologized form of cognitive niche. This posit is substantiated by referring to a case that has come to the fore in recent years and raised debate around the world: the rise of so-called filter bubbles. They turn out to be instantiations of a more general phenomenon of cognitive confinement.

Towards an integrated science of aesthetics: Getting rid of the main misunderstandings in evolutionary aesthetics

Evolutionary Aesthetics is a bourgeoning and thriving sub-field of Aesthetics, the main aim of which is “the importation of aesthetics into natural sciences, and especially its integration into the heuristic of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.” Notwithstanding the growing popularity in the past two decades, a look into the state of current research in Evolutionary Aesthetics suggests a significant degree of haziness in the field from both epistemological-methodological and theoretical points of view. The main aim of the present paper is to evaluate consistency and coherence of the Evolutionary Aesthetics’ research programme against the background of Boix Mansilla’s epistemic criteria for interdisciplinary research programmes, and to assess the potential of epigenetics and niche construction theory as two new promising research avenues in a revised, updated Evolutionary Aesthetics.

Adaptations and transformations of hunter-gatherers in forest environments: New archaeological and anthropological insights

Like any other living being, humans constantly influence their environment, be it intentionally or unintentionally. By extracting natural resources, they shape their environment and also that of plants and other animals. A great difference setting people apart from all other living beings is the ability to construct and develop their own niche intentionally, and the unique tool for this is cultural behaviour. Here, we discuss anthropogenic environmental changes of hunter-gatherers and present new palaeoecological and palynological data. The studies are framed with ethnoarchaeological data from Western Siberia to gain a better understanding of how different triggers lead to coping mechanisms. For archaeological implication, we use two Mesolithic case studies from Germany: One of them focuses on hazelnut economy around ancient Lake Duvensee, and the other broaches the issue of selective roe deer hunt and its consequences at the site of Friesack. We address the archaeological evidence from the perspective of active alteration and its consequences, starting our argumentation from a perspective of niche construction theory. This approach has rarely been applied to early Holocene hunter-gatherers in Northern Europe even though the available data render possible to discuss human–environment interaction from such a perspective. It is demonstrated that archaeological research has tools at hand that enables to detect anthropogenic niche construction. However, the ethnoarchaeological example shows limitations and archaeologically invisible triggers and consequent results of human adaptations. The critical revision of such perspectives based on empirical data provides a better understanding of social and environmental transformations in the early- and mid-Holocene.