Life's little builders

摘要

You're sure to have heard of natural selection, but how about niche construction? Kevin Laland and John Odling-Smee champion this neglected evolutionary drivingforce. Think about evolution and you'll probably conjure up a picture of natural selection sculpting organisms over aeons of time to become adapted to specific environments. Hot climates select animals with heat-dispersing adaptations, such as large ears or the ability to pant. But no matter how much an animal flaps its ears or pants, it is not going to affect the local temperature to any significant extent. Environments shape living things: it rarely works the other way around. At least, that is the conventional view of evolution.