Niche construction

(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 into a biome and bulldoze it.

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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