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1.
Culture is probably not rare in animals, although hard experimental evidence is lacking. The strongest case for culture is found in the species most amenable to experimental manipulation, rather than in nonhuman primates. Human culture is much more likely to be cumulative than animal culture, but the reasons for this are not well established. At this point, there is no reason to assume that cumulative culture depends critically on teaching, imitation, language, or perspective‐taking. Currently, animals are being judged according to stricter criteria than humans.  相似文献   

2.
We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene-focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into account biological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs.  相似文献   

3.
Four-month-old infants can integrate local cues provided by two-dimensional pictures and interpret global inconsistencies in structural information to discriminate between possible and impossible objects. This leaves unanswered the issue of the relative contribution of maturation of biologically predisposed mechanisms and of experience with real objects, to the development of this capability. Here we show that, after exposure to objects in which junctions providing cues to global structure were occluded, day-old chicks selectively approach the two-dimensional image that depicted the possible rather than the impossible version of a three-dimensional object, after restoration of the junctions. Even more impressively, completely naive newly hatched chicks showed spontaneous preferences towards approaching two-dimensional depictions of structurally possible rather than impossible objects. These findings suggest that the vertebrate brain can be biologically predisposed towards approaching a two-dimensional image representing a view of a structurally possible three-dimensional object.  相似文献   

4.
Animal innovations range from the discovery of novel food types to the invention of completely novel behaviours. Innovations can give access to new opportunities, and thus enable innovating agents to invade and create novel niches. This in turn can pave the way for morphological adaptation and adaptive radiation. The mechanisms that make innovations possible are probably as diverse as the innovations themselves. So too are their evolutionary consequences. Perhaps because of this diversity, we lack a unifying framework that links mechanism to function. We propose a framework for animal innovation that describes the interactions between mechanism, fitness benefit and evolutionary significance, and which suggests an expanded range of experimental approaches. In doing so, we split innovation into factors (components and phases) that can be manipulated systematically, and which can be investigated both experimentally and with correlational studies. We apply this framework to a selection of cases, showing how it helps us ask more precise questions and design more revealing experiments.  相似文献   

5.
基于生态位构建的n-种群集合种群动态分析   总被引:5,自引:1,他引:5       下载免费PDF全文
韩晓卓  张彦宇 《生态学报》2008,28(7):3271-3277
生态位构建是指任何有机体具有的对环境的修复作用,其可能对集合种群的动态与分布产生深刻的影响.尝试性的将生态位构建概念引入集合种群的续存与动态这一复杂问题的研究中,建立了具有生态位构建作用的多物种集合种群的数学模型.模拟结果表明:随着生态位构建能力的增强,种群的续存能力和平衡态大小都有所增加;在此过程中,生态序的变化具有一定的规律性,分别呈现灭绝数为零的 1、 3、 5、 7和 9的协同演化.  相似文献   

6.
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One of the greatest difficulties with evolutionary approaches in the study of stone tools (lithics) has been finding a mechanism for tying culture and biology in a way that preserves human agency and operates at scales that are visible in the archaeological record. The concept of niche construction, whereby organisms actively construct their environments and change the conditions for selection, could provide a solution to this problem. In this review, we evaluate the utility of niche construction theory (NCT) for stone tool archaeology. We apply NCT to lithics both as part of the “extended phenotype” and as residuals or precipitates of other niche‐constructing activities, suggesting ways in which archaeologists can employ niche construction feedbacks to generate testable hypotheses about stone tool use. Finally, we conclude that, as far as its applicability to lithic archaeology, NCT compares favorably to other prominent evolutionary approaches, such as human behavioral ecology and dual‐inheritance theory.  相似文献   

8.
    
Niche construction refers to the activities of organisms that bring about changes in their environments, many of which are evolutionarily and ecologically consequential. Advocates of niche construction theory (NCT) believe that standard evolutionary theory fails to recognize the full importance of niche construction, and consequently propose a novel view of evolution, in which niche construction and its legacy over time (ecological inheritance) are described as evolutionary processes, equivalent in importance to natural selection. Here, we subject NCT to critical evaluation, in the form of a collaboration between one prominent advocate of NCT, and a team of skeptics. We discuss whether niche construction is an evolutionary process, whether NCT obscures or clarifies how natural selection leads to organismal adaptation, and whether niche construction and natural selection are of equivalent explanatory importance. We also consider whether the literature that promotes NCT overstates the significance of niche construction, whether it is internally coherent, and whether it accurately portrays standard evolutionary theory. Our disagreements reflect a wider dispute within evolutionary theory over whether the neo‐Darwinian synthesis is in need of reformulation, as well as different usages of some key terms (e.g., evolutionary process).  相似文献   

9.
This paper contributes to a debate in the palaeoarchaeological community about the major time-lag between the origin of anatomically modern humans and the appearance of typically human cultural behaviour. Why did humans take so long—at least 100 000 years—to become ‘behaviourally modern’? The transition is often explained as a change in the intrinsic cognitive competence of modern humans: often in terms of a new capacity for symbolic thought, or the final perfection of language. These cognitive breakthrough models are not satisfactory, for they fail to explain the uneven palaeoanthropological record of human competence. Many supposed signature capacities appear (and then disappear) before the supposed cognitive breakthrough; many of the signature capacities disappear again after the breakthrough. So, instead of seeing behavioural modernity as a simple reflection of a new kind of mind, this paper presents a niche construction conceptual model of behavioural modernity. Humans became behaviourally modern when they could reliably transmit accumulated informational capital to the next generation, and transmit it with sufficient precision for innovations to be preserved and accumulated. In turn, the reliable accumulation of culture depends on the construction of learning environments, not just intrinsic cognitive machinery. I argue that the model is (i) evolutionarily plausible: the elements of the model can be assembled incrementally, without implausible selective scenarios; (ii) the model coheres with the broad palaeoarchaeological record; (iii) the model is anthropologically and ethnographically plausible; and (iv) the model is testable, though only in coarse, preliminary ways.  相似文献   

10.
    
Aims Plants of similar life forms and closely related species have been observed to create similar types of plant–soil feedbacks (PSFs). However, investigations of the consistency of PSFs within species have not yielded clear results. For example, it has been reported that species create different types of PSFs in their native and introduced ranges. The aim of this project is to examine if four species create similar PSF types from soils collected from widely distributed areas within their introduced range. The soil for this project was collected from three areas in western North America. With this design, we aim to determine species- and site-specific ability to create PSFs and if the type of PSF created is consistent in all soil from all three collection areas. The species examined are Agropyron cristatum, Centaurea solstitialis, Poa pratensis and Taeniatherum caput-medusae.Methods We used three-field collected soils (from northern Nevada, western Montana and eastern Montana) in a two-phase greenhouse experiment to quantify the type of PSFs created by four invasive species. The first phase was a conditioning phase wherein each invasive species created species-specific changes to the soil. The second phase of the experiment was the response phase wherein both the conditioning species and a native phytometer were grown in the conditioned soil and in unconditioned (control) soil. The final aboveground biomass was used to evaluate the effect of conditioning and to determine the type of PSF created by each invasive species.Important findings Our results suggest that three of our four study species did show consistency in relation to PSF. Two species A. cristatum and T. caput-medusae consistently created PSF types that benefit conspecifics more than heterospecifics (and thus are 'invasive' PSF types) and P. pratensis consistently exhibited no, or 'neutral', feedbacks. The fourth species (C. solstitialis) was inconsistent: in one soil, no feedback was created; in other soil, an invasive PSF was created and in the last soil, a feedback that relatively benefited the native phytometer was created. Thus, PSFs appear to uniformly contribute to the success of two species (A. cristatum and T. caput-medusae) but not C. solstitialis nor P. pratensis.  相似文献   

11.
The idea of alternate stable states (ASS) has been used to explain the juxtaposition of distinct vegetation types within the same climate regime. ASS may explain the co‐existence of relatively inflammable closed‐canopy Afrotemperate forest patches (‘Forest’) within fire‐prone open‐canopy Fynbos in the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) on sandstone‐derived soils. We evaluated the hypothesis that although fire and local topography and hydrology likely determined the paleogeographic boundaries of Forest, present‐day boundaries are additionally imposed by emergent edaphic properties and disturbance histories. We studied vegetation and edaphic properties of Forest‐Transition‐Fynbos vegetation at two sites within the CFR on sandstone‐derived soils and tracked historical change using aerial photography. Whereas Forest and Fynbos have changed little in extent or density since 1945, transition vegetation increased into areas formerly occupied by Fynbos. Forest soils were ubiquitously more nutrient‐rich than Fynbos soils, with transition soils being intermediate. These edaphic differences are not due to geological differences, but instead appear to have emerged as a consequence of different nutrient cycling within the different ecosystems. Soil nutrients are now so different that a switch from Fynbos to Forest is unlikely, in the short term (i.e. decades). Floristically and nutritionally, transitional vegetation is more similar to Fynbos than Forest and may be less resilient to changes in exogenous drivers (e.g. fire). Our findings are consistent with the idea that geologically Forest and Fynbos are largely fire‐derived long‐term ASS, with the stability of each state reinforced by marked soil nutrient differences. In contrast, the intermediate transitional vegetation that might switch states is unlikely to be stable.  相似文献   

12.
    
Relatively, few species have been able to colonize extremely cold alpine environments. We investigate the role played by the cushion life form in the evolution of climatic niches in the plant genus Androsace s.l., which spreads across the mountain ranges of the Northern Hemisphere. Using robust methods that account for phylogenetic uncertainty, intraspecific variability of climatic requirements and different life-history evolution scenarios, we show that climatic niches of Androsace s.l. exhibit low phylogenetic signal and that they evolved relatively recently and punctually. Models of niche evolution fitted onto phylogenies show that the cushion life form has been a key innovation providing the opportunity to occupy extremely cold environments, thus contributing to rapid climatic niche diversification in the genus Androsace s.l. We then propose a plausible scenario for the adaptation of plants to alpine habitats.  相似文献   

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This study describes the stone handling (SH) behavior of captive rhesus macaques and compares it with that of a captive troop of Japanese macaques with reference to the relative contributions of phylogeny-driven behavioral propensities, environmental differences and socially facilitated learning to the formation of culture. These systematically collected data demonstrate for the first time that two closely related macaque species might share a common cultural behavior, SH. The rhesus troop displayed SH behavioral patterns that was already described in Japanese macaque troops. The one exception was a new pattern not yet seen in any Japanese macaque troop. Differences in the physical environment of the two study enclosures may be responsible for some of the variation in observed SH behavioral patterns in these two troops. These data support the idea that environmental factors can be important for the formation of cultural variation, when the key materials needed to perform the behavior are present in both habitats (stones). Our results are consistent with the prediction made by Huffman and Hirata [The biology of tradition: Models and evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p 267-296] that an interactive triad of phylogenetic, environmental and social factors can be responsible for the formation of cultural variation in primates.  相似文献   

15.
    
An agent-based perspective in the study of complex systems is well established in diverse disciplines, yet is only beginning to be applied to evolutionary developmental biology. In this essay, we begin by defining agency and associated terminology formally. We then explore the assumptions and predictions of an agency perspective, apply these to select processes and key concept areas relevant to practitioners of evolutionary developmental biology, and consider the potential epistemic roles that an agency perspective might play in evo devo. Throughout, we discuss evidence supportive of agential dynamics in biological systems relevant to evo devo and explore where agency thinking may enrich the explanatory reach of research efforts in evolutionary developmental biology.  相似文献   

16.
    
Stone handling (SH) in Japanese macaques, a form of solitary-object play, is newly acquired only by young individuals, and is the first example of a directly nonadaptive behavior that is maintained as a behavioral tradition within free-ranging provisioned social troops. We report here the first systematic investigation of this behavior in a stable captive social troop, the Takahama troop, which is housed in an outdoor enclosure of the Primate Research Institute (PRI), Kyoto University, Japan. This study was conducted to evaluate relevant competing hypotheses regarding the function of object play (e.g., misdirected foraging behavior and motor training) to explain the proximal causes and ultimate function(s) of SH. The \"misdirected foraging behavior\" hypothesis can be ruled out because of the lack of a clear temporal relationship between feeding and the occurrence of SH in any age class. Age-related differences in SH performance and behavioral patterns were observed, suggesting possible differences in the immediate cause and ultimate function between young and adults. Young individuals engaged in frequent bouts of short duration, involving locomotion and vigorous body actions throughout the day, which is typical for play by young in general. This pattern of behavior is consistent with the motor training hypothesis, which states that play occurs during the development of motor and perceptual skills and is thus potentially critical for neural and cognitive development. This practice is continued by those who acquire it at an early age, with adults engaging in significantly fewer but longer bouts that involve more stationary, complex manipulative patterns, almost exclusively in the late afternoon. We propose that for adults, at the proximate level SH is psychologically relaxing, but ultimately functions to maintain and regenerate neural pathways, and potentially helps to slow down the deterioration of cognitive function associated with advanced age in long-lived provisioned and captive macaques.  相似文献   

17.
  总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1  
Ecological niche construction, the process whereby an organism improves its environment to enhance its growth and persistence, is an important missing element of niche theory. Niche theory has mainly focused on niche-deteriorating processes, such as resource consumption, predation and competition, which have negative effects on population growth. Here, we integrate niche construction explicitly into modern niche theory. We use a graphical approach to analyse how a species' niche-improving impacts interplay with niche-deteriorating impacts to modify its response to the environment. In a model of two consumers that compete for one limiting resource and one predator, we show how niche construction modifies the traditional niche-deteriorating impacts of its agent or of competing species, and hence the potential for species coexistence. By altering the balance between intraspecific and interspecific competitive effects, niche construction can either generate net interspecific facilitation or strengthen interspecific competition. The adaptive benefit derived from niche construction also strongly affects the realized niche of a niche-constructing species.  相似文献   

18.
    
Theories of aposematism often focus on the idea that warning displays evolve because they work as effective signals to predators. Here, we argue that aposematism may instead evolve because, by enhancing protection, it enables animals to become more exposed and thereby gain resource‐gathering benefits, for example, through a wider foraging niche. Frequency‐dependent barriers (caused by enhanced conspicuousness relative to other prey and low levels of predator education) are generally assumed to make the evolution of aposematism particularly challenging. Using a deterministic, evolutionary model we show that aposematic display could evolve relatively easily if it enabled prey to move more freely around their environments, or become exposed in some other manner that provides fitness benefits unrelated to predation risk. Furthermore, the model shows that the traits of aposematic conspicuousness and behavior which lead to raised exposure positively affect each other, so that the optimal level of both tends to increase when the traits exist together, compared to when they exist in isolation. We discuss the ecological and evolutionary consequences of aposematism. One conclusion is that aposematism could be a key evolutionary innovation, because by widening habitat use it may promote adaptive radiation as a byproduct of enhanced ecological opportunity.  相似文献   

19.
Natural mortality of puffadder shysharks Haploblepharus edwardsii due to two species of marine tetrapod, the Cape fur seal Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus and the black‐backed kelp gull Larus dominicanis vetula , is reported. These data constitute the first multiple observations of natural mortality of any cartilaginous fish due to object play or kleptoparasitism by marine tetrapods. Evidence of range extension of the puffadder shyshark to False Bay, South Africa is presented.  相似文献   

20.
    
Whether play occurs in fishes has long been a contentious issue, but recent observations document that social, object, and locomotor play can all be found in some species of teleosts. However, quantitative studies and those documenting individual differences are rare. We recorded hundreds of occurrences of an unusual behavior in three male Tropheus duboisi. The target behavior of attacking and deflecting an object that rapidly returned to its upright position not only fit the criteria for play behavior, but differed quantitatively and qualitatively among the individuals. This behavior has not been observed in other species of cichlids and other kinds of fishes. The presence or absence of food or other fish either within the aquarium or visible in an adjacent aquarium had no marked or consistent effect on the occurrence of the behavior. Various explanations for the origin and function of the behavior are discussed.  相似文献   

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