84 Informational environments
any intervention by an organism or population into processes in the external environment that changes conditions therein in such a way that the intervention in
question becomes a necessary part of the explanation of the nature of the organism
or population and their adaptive success – or failure. The construction of environments is not to be understood in a literal sense, although the building of material
structures might be involved.
On the face of it, construction, Lewontin-style, refers to the observation that
some properties of the environment might be modified by behaviours of the
organism, not only in terms of animals building structures in their environments,
but more broadly in terms of certain variables being affected by the behaviour in
question, where these variables might be relevant to the organism himself or to
other organisms inhabiting the same slice of space-time, or a subsequent one. For
example a herd of grazing animals is likely to affect the shape of the flora and soil
conditions of their pastures, both in the short and in the long term. The effects of
their grazing might also improve the conditions for reproduction of some inedible
plants that would otherwise be outcompeted by those now eaten by the animals.
Lewontian environmental construction also includes cases where features of
the environment remain physically unaltered while being treated in such a way
as to affect the attainment of an organism’s or population’s goals. This kind of
construction seems to be implied in his example of subspecies of Drosophila
pseudoobscura and their humidity preferences (Lewontin 2000, 53f ): one would
expect that the subspecies from drier regions have a lower humidity preference
than those from more humid regions, but the reverse was demonstrated to hold.
The arid-environment subspecies live in small crevices in which the little moisture there is in those environments accumulates. In this case, the term “construction” refers to the activity of animals seeking out microhabitats with suitable
conditions, which will count as their environments proper, rather than an activity
of modifying conditions in that microhabitat.
These cases should be distinguished from a third type of intervention by organisms into environmental conditions that was also subsumed under the “construction” label by Lewontin: situations where the effects of an organism’s behaviours
undermine rather than foster the attainment of his goals or his chances of reproduction. For example the behaviours of a grazing herd might affect rates of soil
erosion in their territory, thus possibly undermining their own chances of reproduction while, at the same time, being beneficial to algae or bacteria living off the
nutrients swept downstream during this year’s rainy season. Hence, the overgrazing herd might contribute to constructing the niche, and to improving the ecological environment, for some plant in some remote place while ultimately destroying
its own ecological environment. Such accidental side effects only indirectly, and
clearly only negatively, relate to the possible adaptive functions of the traits that
produce those effects. It is here the latest where Lewontin’s notion of environmental construction becomes too broad to be entirely useful, as Peter Godfrey-Smith
(1996a) observes.
Theories of niche construction, having found their paradigmatic formulations
in F. John Odling-Smee et al. (1996; 2003), with Meredith West and Andrew
any intervention by an organism or population into processes in the external environment that changes conditions therein in such a way that the intervention in
question becomes a necessary part of the explanation of the nature of the organism
or population and their adaptive success – or failure. The construction of environments is not to be understood in a literal sense, although the building of material
structures might be involved.
On the face of it, construction, Lewontin-style, refers to the observation that
some properties of the environment might be modified by behaviours of the
organism, not only in terms of animals building structures in their environments,
but more broadly in terms of certain variables being affected by the behaviour in
question, where these variables might be relevant to the organism himself or to
other organisms inhabiting the same slice of space-time, or a subsequent one. For
example a herd of grazing animals is likely to affect the shape of the flora and soil
conditions of their pastures, both in the short and in the long term. The effects of
their grazing might also improve the conditions for reproduction of some inedible
plants that would otherwise be outcompeted by those now eaten by the animals.
Lewontian environmental construction also includes cases where features of
the environment remain physically unaltered while being treated in such a way
as to affect the attainment of an organism’s or population’s goals. This kind of
construction seems to be implied in his example of subspecies of Drosophila
pseudoobscura and their humidity preferences (Lewontin 2000, 53f ): one would
expect that the subspecies from drier regions have a lower humidity preference
than those from more humid regions, but the reverse was demonstrated to hold.
The arid-environment subspecies live in small crevices in which the little moisture there is in those environments accumulates. In this case, the term “construction” refers to the activity of animals seeking out microhabitats with suitable
conditions, which will count as their environments proper, rather than an activity
of modifying conditions in that microhabitat.
These cases should be distinguished from a third type of intervention by organisms into environmental conditions that was also subsumed under the “construction” label by Lewontin: situations where the effects of an organism’s behaviours
undermine rather than foster the attainment of his goals or his chances of reproduction. For example the behaviours of a grazing herd might affect rates of soil
erosion in their territory, thus possibly undermining their own chances of reproduction while, at the same time, being beneficial to algae or bacteria living off the
nutrients swept downstream during this year’s rainy season. Hence, the overgrazing herd might contribute to constructing the niche, and to improving the ecological environment, for some plant in some remote place while ultimately destroying
its own ecological environment. Such accidental side effects only indirectly, and
clearly only negatively, relate to the possible adaptive functions of the traits that
produce those effects. It is here the latest where Lewontin’s notion of environmental construction becomes too broad to be entirely useful, as Peter Godfrey-Smith
(1996a) observes.
Theories of niche construction, having found their paradigmatic formulations
in F. John Odling-Smee et al. (1996; 2003), with Meredith West and Andrew