Niche construction¶

(niːʃ kənˈstrʌkʃ(ə)n): The evolutionary biologist’s word for the idea that organisms might change their environment, and thus the selection pressures upon them. Classic examples:

• earthworms, that create the type of soil that fosters more earthworms.
• humans, who typically improve the habitability of their environment before drastically reducing it - e.g. building houses by chopping down trees, shortly thereafter getting the destabilised topsoil that grows their food washed away. Or burning coal fuels to warm their houses, only to choke on smog.

Specifically, niche construction is interesting because it implies that there are some non-trivial consequences to selection acting upon the phenotype, as opposed to the genotype as lazy genetic programmers might imply.

If we suppose that evolutionary-like processes act upon culture, then niche-construction-like dynamics seem likely to be a highly dominant effect.