Talk:Niche construction

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wshoenberger. Peer reviewers: Beesbewithyou.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Better defintion for this theory
I've made edits, and will continue to, so as to present the theory of niche-construction as accurately as those who believe in it could hope for. It is still a contentious subject in evolutionary biology, however, and a new section is coming to allow for counter-arguments to also appear on this page. This is to encourage the discussion of niche-construction to continue, without the confusion of what the theory actually constitutes.

Beavers - niche construction?
It's not immediately obvious to me what niches are being created by dam building. Anyone want to add something on that? - Samsara 13:01, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the edit, WAS 4.250! It's made something clearer in my mind. Niche construction actually refers to the building of new niches, not new instances of the same old niche, and the beaver example to my mind doesn't belong here. I'll change it. - Samsara 01:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Changed my mind again. I guess if it deepens the lake, it could create a niche for, say, a catfish specifically adapted to a greater depth. - Samsara 01:10, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Beavers often dam rivers that previously had no lakes in that area, creating one from scratch effectively, in order to build their home in the center of it. Also once the dam breaks and the area is abandoned by the beavers it creates marshy areas used by many species that wouldn't normally be found there. Check the beaver page for more detail.

In one way or another all organisms influence their environment, even if its something as simple as the fact that feeding reduces the amount of food avaliable to them in the future. And any change to the environment can be described as niche construction, at least in general terms. Extreme and obvious examples like beaver dams or human houses are just useful examples because they're easier to grasp if you're new to the concept. Danikat 22:26, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

versus Group Selection
Has any work been done on comparing Niche Construction with group selection, or critiquing group selection assumptions from a niche construction POV?

Is "group selection" possibly just a form of niche construction, rather than an equivalent to individual Darwinian selection. I.E. populations (landraces?) compete and those "groups/modified enviromental sets" which can provide a better environment for their individuals (says, diseases which another population has no resistance to for example) and so that population benefits?

I.E. can niche construction explain away apparent group selection? Afer all niche construction is not subject to reproductive life-cycle bottleneck at an individual level, and neither is "group selection". --Meika (talk) 12:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Needs expansion
"Differs from the The Extended Phenotype in that the process is not necessarily subject to a reproductive life-cycle bottleneck in the short term (as is the caddis larval case example). The Extended Phenotype cannot be considered a subset of Niche Construction."

Why, for instance, are beaver dams (a classic EP) subject to a reproductive life-cycle bottleneck? And if NC differes from EP only in not being subject to this constraint (as is implied), why cannot EP be considered a subset of NC? Chris 1955 London 25 May 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris London 1955 (talk • contribs) 11:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Figure Has Errors ("Niche Construction in Evolutionary Time")
The figure labeled "Niche Consturction in Evolutionary Time" has an error. Specifically, the t+2 column claims to show positive niche construction, but it rather shows natural selection (since the organism's phenotype changes (h => t)). My proposal is to leave the organism's phenotype as h and to change the environment's attribute to H (from T). Of course, the corresponding changes should be made in columns t+3 and t+4 in order to keep this particular phenotype/environmental attribute constant in subsequent times. (That is, in columns t+3 and t+4 also change: t => h and T => H.)

For comparison, see the figure that this one is probably modeled after on page 73 of: "Mapping the future of biology: evolving concepts and theories"

Incidentally, after finally finding a way to edit the PDF myself, I ran into the difficulties of uploading the file to Wikipedia. I still have the PDF locally.

75.185.218.86 (talk) 02:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Niche Concept
It's unclear to me how the concept of niche construction differs from that of an ecosystem engineer. Also it's unclear to me what ecological niche concept niche construction is trying to invoke. It clearly doesn't make any sense under the hutchinsonian niche concept. If one of the primary authors of this article could clarify these points it would be much appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Taricha (talk • contribs) 02:51, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Response: A Huntchinsonian niche is a region in multidimentional space that maps out the conditions in which a species can survive and reproduce. If that species' environment should change, rendering the environment outside of the species' Hutchinsonian niche, then the species has two options to enable its survival: It can either change itself (by natural selection, as usually considered), or it can change its environment. Changing its environment by carrying out particular behaviours could change the current environment to return back inside its Hutchinsonian niche. It's really that simple. It makes perfect sense. Is the problem that you can't see how organisms could change their environment via their behaviours, or that an equivalent term already exists for this process? If it's the former, then there are plenty of examples in the article describing how organisms behaviours change their environments. If it's the latter, then it's a semantic issue and shoud be clearly labelled as such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.40.193.5 (talk) 14:41, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid Taricha's question is valid. For instance if the fundamental niche is conceived as an hypervolume of requirements, then modifying the environment does NOT in general qualify as a modification of this hypervolume (things would be different with the realized niche). This is a semantic issue, but an important one: a niche is not just an environment ; particularly under the Hutchinsonian concept. This said, the niche concept of Odling-Smee et al is different: it is a set of evolutionary pressures. A thorough discussion of these concepts can be found in. Maybe something to make clear? One could add a short section specifying the concept along these lines? Magomahot (talk) 04:54, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

What about: "epigenetics" and "memes"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1811:C0B:F500:D933:74A:8FC8:FFA5 (talk) 08:07, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Peer Reviewer 1 Global Edits: The lead paragraph is well written and gives an easy to read understanding of what niche reconstruction is. However, in this section I would clarify if an organism is able to do niche reconstruction because of their genes or if this phenomenon is based on environmental influence. If you were able to find how heritable niche reconstruction ability is that might help make this subject more clear and easy to comprehend. I thought you had enough examples to show how variable niche reconstruction is among species. The section on humans in relation to niche reconstruction is somewhat confusing in regards to how differences in human culture and languages relates to the other examples of organisms and niche reconstruction. Local Edits: I did not catch any mistakes in spelling or wording, so great job with that! However, I would add another citation or resource under the consequences for organisms section in order to expand that section's information because that section is smaller in content than other sections. Besides that, this article is very interesting, and I enjoyed reading it! Jenniehorstmann (talk) 20:07, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Jennie Horstmann