Niche construction
July 26, 2011 — July 26, 2011
evolution
(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 move in to a biome and bulldoze it
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 genetic programmers might intuit.
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