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Ecosystem engineering, experiment, and evolution

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Abstract

This paper argues that philosophers should pay more attention to the idea of ecosystem engineering and to the scientific literature surrounding it. Ecosystem engineering is a broad but clearly delimited concept that is less subject to many of the “it encompasses too much” criticisms that philosophers have directed at niche construction. The limitations placed on the idea of ecosystem engineering point the way to a narrower idea of niche construction. Moreover, experimental studies in the ecosystem engineering literature provide detailed accounts of particular empirical situations in which we cannot neglect the O term in dE/dt = g (O, E), which helps us get beyond verbal arguments and simple models purporting to show that niche construction must not be ignored as a factor in evolution. Finally, this literature demonstrates that while ecosystem engineering studies may not require us to embrace a new evolutionary process, as niche construction advocates have claimed, they do teach us that the myriad abiotic factors concealed by the abstract term ‘environment’ are often controlled in large part by organisms.

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Notes

  1. For a critical discussion of Lewontin’s position, see Godfrey-Smith (2001).

  2. Although it is mentioned in several papers by Sterelny (2001, 333, 2005, 23), he follows Odling-Smee and colleagues in neglecting important differences between the concepts of niche construction and ecosystem engineering.

  3. Figure 1 strictly shows only that the term ‘ecosystem engineering’ is cited more commonly than ‘niche construction’, and not that the former concept is more often employed. However, given that the original ecosystem engineering papers are more frequently cited than the original niche construction papers (see below), and the fact that the literatures are to some extent divided along disciplinary lines, I believe it suggests that the idea of ecosystem engineering has been more influential than that of niche construction. Synonymous uses of the two terms are more common in the niche construction literature than in the ecosystem engineering literature.

  4. As mentioned above, Odling-Smee had previously published “Niche-Constructing Phenotypes” (1988), but since it was a book chapter rather than a journal article it had much less influence.

  5. As of June 6, 2010, Odling-Smee et al. (1996) has 786 citations listed on Google Scholar, versus 1,462 for Jones et al. (1994). The reason for this 1:2 ratio (versus 1:10 for ISI) is unclear, but it may be because niche construction is referenced in book chapters or journal articles that do not appear in the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge database (e.g., Sterelny 2001). Hence, this discrepancy may indicate that niche construction has been more popular outside the scientific community than within it.

  6. Odling Smee et al. (2003) follow Bock (1980) in decomposing organism and environment into features and factors, respectively.

  7. See Odling-Smee et al. (1996, 641). Thus the statement by Laland et al. (2005, 41) that “throughout our studies on niche construction we have been consistent in utilizing the broad definition” is false.

  8. I am using ‘environment’ here to mean the external environment in Robert Brandon’s sense, for even if niche construction that modifies physical aspects of an organism or population’s ecological or selective environment is more relevant to evolution, all modifications of the latter two environments depend on modifications of the external environment (see Brandon 1990, 47–49, 2001). It is difficult to separate these different types of modifications a priori.

  9. This second reason is not general, for there are many cases of niche construction, especially in plants, that do not involve behavior: e.g., Dawson (1998).

  10. Sterelny (2005, 29–31) argues that there is a deeper problem. Because niche construction is the modification of environments and extended phenotypes are parts of organisms, it is unclear how one can result in the other.

  11. This is an important difference between my account and that of Erwin (2008, 304). Erwin does not require that niche construction affect the fitness of the constructing organisms, does not indicate that only physical modification counts as ecosystem engineering, and does not treat the two concepts as nested.

  12. Bosc referred to the species in question as Nereis cuprea, and mentioned that the tube-worms were common in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

  13. There are also, of course, organisms that live on the tubes themselves (Bell and Coen 1982a, b; Bell 1985).

  14. Strangely, W.H. Benson, the original describer of this species (as Modiola senhousia), does not even mention the byssal cocoon (Cantor 1842, 489).

  15. There are also several other studies of polychaete tube effects that employ mimics: Dauer et al. (1982) Eckman and Nowell (1984), Eckman (1985), and Callaway (2003). One study even uses vial caps to mimic dead barnacles (Dean 1981).

  16. Indirect feedback is also involved in this case, however. The engineering activities of cyanobacteria eventually led to an explosion of aerobic organisms, some of which in turn competed with or predated on cyanobacteria.

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Acknowledgments

I thank David Jablonski, Sarah Berke, William Wimsatt, Robert Richards, Leigh Van Valen, Kim Sterelny, Christopher Diteresi, Beckett Sterner, William Sterner, Elise Berman, and an anonymous referee for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. I also benefited greatly from discussions with Kim Cuddington, Justin Wright, and the members of Susan Kidwell and David Jablonski’s Topics in Paleobiology (Autumn 2009) seminar on ecosystem engineering.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Rotman Institute of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, Stevenson Hall 2150G, London, ON, N6A 5B8, Canada

    Trevor Pearce

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Pearce, T. Ecosystem engineering, experiment, and evolution. Biol Philos 26, 793–812 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-011-9282-2

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