A01=F. John Odling-Smee
A01=Kevin N. Lala
A01=Marcus Feldman
Adaptationism
Adaptive radiation
Allele
Allelopathy
Allopatric speciation
Author_F. John Odling-Smee
Author_Kevin N. Lala
Author_Marcus Feldman
Behavioural genetics
Category=PSAJ
Category=RNC
Character displacement
Charles Darwin
Chemical defense
Coevolution
Competition
Complex adaptive system
Cultural group selection
Decomposer
Directional selection
Ecological niche
Ecology
Ecosystem
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Evolution
Evolution of eusociality
Evolution of sexual reproduction
Evolutionary biology
Evolutionary game theory
Evolutionary psychology
Fitness (biology)
Genetic variability
Group selection
Heritability
Human behavioral ecology
Human mating strategies
Idealization
Inclusive fitness
Keystone species
Kin selection
Lamarckism
Law of effect
Mate choice
Mating
Mendelian inheritance
Mimicry
Modern evolutionary synthesis
Muller's ratchet
Natural selection
Neo-Darwinism
Niche construction
Nutrient
Obligate
Organism
Overdominance
Parasitism
Parental investment
Phenotypic plasticity
Phylogeny (psychoanalysis)
Polymorphism (biology)
Population
Population cycle
Population genetics
Rate of evolution
Reaction norm
Reciprocal altruism
Reproductive isolation
Reproductive success
Richard Lewontin
Selection bias
Sexual selection
Social Darwinism
Sympatric speciation
The Evolution of Cooperation
The Selfish Gene
Trophic cascade
Product details
- ISBN 9780691044378
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jul 2003
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The seemingly innocent observation that the activities of organisms bring about changes in environments is so obvious that it seems an unlikely focus for a new line of thinking about evolution. 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. It also plays a critical role in ecology, supporting ecosystem engineering and influencing the flow of energy and nutrients through ecosystems. 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. The authors support their historic move with empirical data, theoretical population genetics, and conceptual models.
They also describe new research methods capable of testing the theory. They demonstrate how their theory can resolve long-standing problems in ecology, particularly by advancing the sorely needed synthesis of ecology and evolution, and how it offers an evolutionary basis for the human sciences. Already hailed as a pioneering work by some of the world's most influential biologists, this is a rare, potentially field-changing contribution to the biological sciences.
F. John Odling-Smee is a Lecturer in Oxford University's Institute of Biological Anthropology. Kevin N. Laland is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader in Biology at the University of St. Andrews. Marcus W. Feldman is Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University.
