Aaby, Bendik and Ramsey, Grant
(2019)
Three Kinds of Niche Construction.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
ISSN 1464-3537
Abstract
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 which 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.
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