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Essay
Nature 429, 609 (10 June 2004) | doi:10.1038/429609a
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Postdoctoral Position
- Fox Chase Cancer Center
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, 19111
Lectureship in Ecology
- University of Southampton
- Southampton, Hampshire, SO16 7PX, UK
Concept Causing a commotion
Kevin N. Laland1, John Odling-Smee2 & Marcus W. Feldman3
- Kevin N. Laland is in the School of Biology, St Andrews University, UK.
- John Odling-Smee is at the Institute of Biological Anthropology, Oxford University, UK.
- Marcus W. Feldman is in the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, USA.
Abstract
Niche construction: do the changes that organisms make to their habitats transform evolution and influence natural selection?
Evolutionary biology has always generated vigorous debate, from the arguments about lamarckian inheritance during the 1900s, to the more recent disputes over punctuated equilibria and group selection. The latest spat — a storm in a teacup compared with these earlier controversies — concerns the seemingly prosaic observation that the activities of organisms bring about changes in their environments — a process known as niche construction.
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