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Niche construction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Niche construction is the process in which an organism alters its own environment in order to increase its chance of survival. However, recently several biologists have argued that niche selection is as important to evolution as natural selection; not only does the environment cause changes in species, but species also cause changes in their environment. The effect of niche construction may be especially pronounced in situations where the alterations persist for several generations, introducing ecological inheritance. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Niche_construction   (225 words)

[CrashList] Niche Construction, Biological Evolution and Cultural Change 1of2   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) In the presence of niche construction, adaptation ceases to be a one-way process, exclusively a response to environmentally imposed problems: instead it becomes a two-wa= y process, with populations of organisms setting as well as solving problem= s. Niche construction that mitigates= a selection pressure may allow populations to maintain greater levels of genetic variation at those loci that would have been affected by selectio= n had the population not expressed that particular niche-constructing trait= s, because it shields such variation from selection. If we assume that hominid niche construction is more flexibl= e than that of other mammals, and that culture enhances the capacity of hum= ans to alter their niches, such that the more technically advanced a culture = the greater its capacity for counteractive niche construction, then a number = of hypotheses follow. lists.econ.utah.edu /pipermail/a-list/2000-August/013615.html   (8495 words)

On the Aims of Evolutionary Theory by Thomas E. Dickins Niche construction occurs when an organism modifies the feature-factor relationship between itself and its environment, either by physically perturbing factors at its current location in space and time, or by relocating to a different space-time address, thereby exposing itself to different factors. Niche construction occurs when an organism modifies the functional relationship between itself and its environment by actively changing one or more of the factors in its environment, either by physically perturbing these factors at its current address, or by relocating to a different address, thereby exposing itself to different factors. Niche construction, as described by OLF does not have this characteristic at all, but instead amounts simply to a long list of situations in which very different actions lead to very different changes. human-nature.com /ep/reviews/ep037984.html   (2574 words)

Sample Chapter for Odling-Smee, F.J., Laland, K., Feldman, M.W.: Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. The mother's niche construction has modified the selection on her offspring, resulting in a cascade of evolutionary events, including the selection of further niche construction on the part of the chick. A third implication of niche construction is that it allows acquired characteristics to play a role in the evolutionary process, in a non-Lamarckian fashion, by their influence on selective environments through niche construction. When phenotypes construct niches, they become more than simply "vehicles" for their genes (Dawkins 1989), as they may now also be responsible for modifying some of the sources of natural selection in their environments that subsequently feed back to select their own genes. pup.princeton.edu /chapters/i7691.html   (10526 words)

Niche Construction as a Means to a Eugenic Community Niche Construction explains: "Moreover, this dual role for phenotypes in evolution does imply that a complete understanding of the relationship between human genes and cultural processes must not only acknowledge genetic inheritance and cultural inheritance, but also take account of the legacy of modified selection pressures in environments, or ecological inheritance. In Niche Construction they note that, "In particular, components of the social environment, for example, traits related to family, kinship, and social stratification, may have been increasingly transmitted from one generation to the next by cultural inheritance to the extent that contemporary human populations may have become largely divorced from local ecological pressures. Constructing our own niches of like-minded people allows eugenicists to live within alien and degenerate cultures, by isolating ourselves from the most corrosive forces like crime, race mixing, and being forced to pretend to be tolerant, while taking collective advantage of the rich resources available. home.comcast.net /~neoeugenics/niche.htm   (7682 words)

RedNova News - Science - Making Themselves at Home   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) Niche construction broadly includes all of the intentional, adaptive, and collateral effects that organisms have on their own and others' physical environments. In tables 2.3-2.7, the animal examples focus on niche construction as an adaptation by which the organism modifies its environment in a manner that is favorable for itself, with collateral positive or negative effects on other organisms (e.g., burrows, nests, and beaver dams). Because Niche Construction is rich in examples and concepts, and provides a richly textured worldview, other readers with different perspectives and biases are likely to debate its conclusions and gain from it in other valuable ways. www.rednova.com /news/display?id=98566   (1040 words)

Niche Construction, Biological Evolution and Cultural Change Niche construction may influence the amount of genetic variation in a population, by affecting the stability of polymorphic equilibria. Niche construction that mitigates a selection pressure may allow populations to maintain greater levels of genetic variation at those loci that would have been affected by selection had the population not expressed that particular niche-constructing traits, because it shields such variation from selection. If we assume that hominid niche construction is more flexible than that of other mammals, and that culture enhances the capacity of humans to alter their niches, such that the more technically advanced a culture the greater its capacity for counteractive niche construction, then a number of hypotheses follow. www.bbsonline.org /documents/a/00/00/05/28/bbs00000528-00/bbs.laland.html   (13385 words)

Welcome to Duke's Center for Philosophy of Biology Niche construction is a concept that appears to have the potential to attract the attention of many cultural anthropologists who find post-sociobiology evolutionary thinking incapable of accommodating their understandings of human agency, human culture, and culture change. By treating constructed niches as finished products whose reliable production can be taken for granted, such definitions wholly ignore skilled cultural practice, which plays a central role in concepts of culture held by many contemporary cultural anthropologists. A robust concept of niche construction and its role in human cultural evolution, I suggest, would not focus narrowly on the evolution of "mind," would be sensitive the embodied process of constructing niches over time, and would make room for the historical contingencies that can intervene in that process. www.duke.edu /philosophy/bio/conference.html   (1888 words)

Odling-Smee, F.J., Laland, K., Feldman, M.W.: Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37). Yet niche construction--as this process of organism-driven environmental modification is known--has hidden complexities. By transforming biotic and abiotic sources of natural selection in external environments, niche construction generates feedback in evolution on a scale hitherto underestimated--and in a manner that transforms the evolutionary dynamic. Despite this, niche construction has been given short shrift in theoretical biology, in part because it cannot be fully understood within the framework of standard evolutionary theory. pup.princeton.edu /titles/7691.html   (568 words)

powell insurance brokers_niche products   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) One sector that felt the brunt of this was undoubtly the construction sector. With the failure of the Independent, a major construction underwriter and many other insurers withdrawing from the market this left those wishing to write construction risks with a free reign and able to dictate premium, terms and conditions. In addition to covering the structures that are being constructed the policy can also be extended to cover items of plant owned by the insured or hired in by them under Contractors Plant Association conditions which hold the hirer responsible for the plant. www.gpowell.co.uk /niche_construction.htm   (792 words)

Reason!Able Structured Tutorial - Niche Construction   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) Organisms may niche construct in ways that counteract natural selection, for example by digging a burrow or migrating to avoid the cold, or they may niche construct in ways which introduce novel selection pressures, for example by exploiting a new food resource which may subsequently select for a new digestive enzyme. They may also do both, for instance if counteractive niche construction itself establishes a novel selection pressure by acting on a second trait, for example, when nest building is further elaborated to enhance defence. In every case, however, the niche construction modifies one or more sources of natural selection in a populations’ environments, and in doing so generates a form of feedback in evolution that is not yet fully appreciated." www.nu.ac.za /undphil/data/nichtut2.htm   (693 words)

philosophy Niche construction is a theoretical descendent of Lewontin’s (1985) earlier criticism of the one-sided causal assumption made by biologists in many of their models. Niche construction then expands upon this insight by providing an explicit model of feedback between inheritance channels in order to identify the effects of organism-constructed environments. We would then expect selection pressures on niche constructing populations to be most effective in the context of isolated populations where the ecological inheritance channel is the most reliable. www.stanford.edu /~sylpha/philosophy.htm   (2040 words)

Niche construction in insects At first sight, the behaviour sequences by which insects construct their burrows appear to be intelligent. Similarly, if a small hole is drilled in the neck of the tower, she seems to lack the resources to cope with a minor repair. Whereas sneezing is a reaction to an irritant in the nose, burrow construction appears to a naive observer to be a carefully controlled sequence of actions, with fine-tuned motor movements. www.angelfire.com /linux/vjtorley/insectniches.html   (532 words)

BBSPrints Archive: Niche Construction, Biological Evolution and Cultural Change. Building on conventional evolutionary theory, the model emphasises the capacity of organisms to modify sources of natural selection in their environment (niche construction); the evolutionary dynamic can also be broadened to incorporate ontogenetic and cultural processes, with phenotypes playing a much more active role in evolution. Culture amplifies the capacity of human beings to modify sources of natural selection in their environments to the point where that capacity raises some new questions about the processes of human adaptation. Niche construction, gene-culture coevolution, human evolution, evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, adaptation. bbsonline.cup.cam.ac.uk /documents/a/00/00/05/28   (250 words)

ScienceWeek There is an increasing recognition that all organisms modify their environments, a process called "niche construction" (also called "ecosystem engineering"). 1) The authors present an analysis of the evolutionary consequences of niche construction using a *population genetics model that extends earlier analyses by allowing resource distributions to be influenced both by niche construction and by independent processes of renewal and depletion. 2) The authors report their analysis confirms that niche construction can be a potent evolutionary agent by generating selection that leads to the fixation of otherwise deleterious *alleles, supporting stable *polymorphisms where none are expected, eliminating what would otherwise be stable polymorphisms, and generating unusual evolutionary dynamics. scienceweek.com /2004/sa040730-2.htm   (1180 words)

[CrashList] FW: Niche Construction, Biological Evolution and Cultural Change   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) In othe= r >words, we predict that organisms should actively harm other organisms by >investing in niche construction that destroys other organism=92s selecti= ve >environments, provided the fitness benefits that accrue to the investing >organisms from doing so, are greater than their fitness costs. If ontogenetic processes, culture, and >counteractive niche construction in general, have consistently damped ou= t >the need for a genetic response to changes in the population=92s environ= ment, >hominid populations may have become increasingly divorced from their >ecological environments. Failure to respon= d to >the feedback from negative niche construction is a possible recipe for >extinction. lists.econ.utah.edu /pipermail/a-list/2000-August/013638.html   (878 words)

CiteULike: Cultural niche construction and the evolution of small family size   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) Cultural niche construction and the evolution of small family size A model of cultural niche construction with two culturally transmitted traits is examined. The frequency of individuals with a certain general predisposition, which is transmitted vertically, plays a role as the cultural background, or the cultural niche, of the population. www.citeulike.org /user/Enro/article/2095   (268 words)

Nail a Construction Niche Most construction businesses use two different tax accounting methods: one for their long-term contracts and one overall method for everything else. Bratlie is a construction expert and a partner of Robertson, Bailes and McClelland, a five-partner Shreveport, Louisiana, firm; he developed his contractor expertise on the job after jumping in to help a client more than 20 years ago. Union construction workers have good pensions, but owners and key employees may not, which makes CPA help with compensation planning and deferred compensation planning especially useful to management. www.aicpa.org /pubs/jofa/mar2003/phelan.htm   (3579 words)

Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology), Princeton ... Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology), Princeton University Press, F. John Odling-Smee, Kevin N. Laland, Marcus W. Feldman Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology) Despite this, niche construction has been given short shrift in theoretical biology, in part because it cannot be fully understood within the framework of standard evolutionary theory.Wedding evolution and ecology, this book extends evolutionary theory by formally including niche construction and ecological inheritance as additional evolutionary processes. allentech.net /bookstore/item_0691044376.html   (272 words)

The Redefinition of Memes: Ascribing Meaning to an Empty Cliché Instead, the replicator status is ascribed to the environmental niches and the memes are their representatives, symbols, or semantic indexicals. For example, if this approach were adapted to an extension of Salingaros and Mikiten’s (2002) exploration of modernism as an architectural meme, the discussion would explore the environmental niche in which the qualities laid out for the success of the modernism thrive. This would be followed by an exploration of what potential risks for the success of the meme lie within and without that niche, and what factors of the meme and/or the niche contribute to its ongoing resilience. jom-emit.cfpm.org /2004/vol8/lissack_mr.html   (6672 words)

Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology) | God Blurb   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology) The Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology) is part of our discount Book catalog. Used Niche Construction : The Neglected Process in Evolution (MPB-37) (Monographs in Population Biology) are in stock for only $26.33. godsblurb.com /amazon/asin.0691044376.Book_Niche_Construction_The_Neglected_Process_in_Evolution_MPB_37_Monographs_in_Population_Biology_.html   (1121 words)

icNewcastle - Moving will aid growth   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) A construction business is sticking to its pledge to go for growth by expanding to larger premises and boosting its workforce. The company is also celebrating a major contract win after landing a deal to project manage construction of the £28m Biofuels Corporation biodiesel plant at Seal Sands, which will has created five jobs for the firm. Construction of Southern Cross Healthcare's new 40,000 sq ft Darlington headquarters has begun. icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk /0500business/commercialproperty/tm_objectid=15675467%26method=full%26siteid=50080%26headline=moving%2dwill%2daid%2dgrowth-name_page.html   (780 words)

Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution:0691044376:Odling-Smee, F. John; Laland, Kevin N.; Feldman, ... Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution:0691044376:Odling-Smee, F. John; Laland, Kevin N.; Feldman, Marcus W.:eCampus.com By transforming biotic and abiotic sources of natural selection in external environments, niche construction generates feedback in evolution on a scale hitherto understimated--and in manner that transforms the evolutionary dynamic. Wedding evolution and ecology, this book extends evolutionary theory by formally including niche construction and ecological inheritance as evolutionary processes. www.ecampus.com /bk_detail.asp?isbn=0691044376&referrer=yah04   (169 words)

The KLI Theory Lab - keywords - niche construction   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) Keywords: Baldwin effect • behavioral plasticity • causal feedback from social macrostructure to genetic microstructure • genetic development., • learning • niche construction • social interaction. Laland, K.N. Odling-Smee, F.J. Feldman, M.W. On the evolutionary consequences of niche construction. Laland, K.N. Odling-Smee, F.J. Feldman, M.W. Niche construction, biological evolution and cultural change. www.kli.ac.at /theorylab/Keyword/N/NicheConstr.html   (121 words)

Evolutionary consequences of niche construction and their implications for ecology -- Laland et al. 96 (18): 10242 -- ... Evolutionary consequences of niche construction and their implications for ecology -- Laland et al. construction and by independent processes of renewal and depletion. The analysis confirms that niche construction can be a potent www.pnas.org /cgi/content/abstract/96/18/10242   (236 words)

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