Historical links between Ethnobiology and Evolution: Conflicts and possible resolutions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2020.101277Get rights and content

Abstract

In recent years there have been several attempts to examine Ethnobiology from an evolutionary perspective. I discuss several potential sources of confusion in applying Evolutionary concepts to Ethnobiology. Ethnobiological discussions of evolution have focused more on changes in human populations, or on human impacts upon plants used by humans for a variety of purposes, than on the processes typically emphasized in discussions by biologists studying evolution. There has been little acknowledgment of how the field of biological evolution is changing in the 21st Century. In this article I focus on recent developments in evolutionary thinking that could be effectively integrated into Ethnobiological concepts. These include: 1) The increased importance of individual organisms in understanding both population dynamics and microevolutionary change (i.e. natural selection). This change in focus creates the potential for incorporating understandings from Indigenous people who recognize a different set of dynamics that govern how both plant and animal populations are regulated, leading to new insights into how conservation practices should be enacted; 2) Niche Construction, which is a 21st century concept that argues that organisms shape their own environments and those of other species. This approach creates a new way of looking at how Natural Selection can act upon a wide range of organisms; and finally, 3) Reticulate Evolution, in which different species exchange genetic material as a result of behavioral or physiological interactions with major evolutionary consequences. These concepts relate strongly to fundamental Indigenous conceptions of ecosystem functioning, including the ideas that All Things are Connected and that All Life Forms are Related. I argue that Ethnobiology and Indigenous Knowledge are strongest in dealing with phenomena linked to behavior and ecology, which are fields being neglected by many contemporary molecular approaches to understanding evolution. Attempts to deal with Conservation in a world subject to climate change would be greatly improved by working closely with Indigenous peoples and incorporating concepts from these traditions into practices on a global scale.

Introduction

To properly explore the relationship between Ethnobiology and Evolution, it is useful to start at the beginnings of the science of Anthropology. This field developed in the shadow of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), the book that started the snowball of evolutionary biology rolling resolutely downhill. In 1877, Lewis Henry Morgan, a business man and anthropological scholar from New York, published Ancient Society, which attempted to create a global model to explain how human societies organized themselves, arguing that all societies pass through the same stages in their evolution. Morgan was a mentor of American explorer and scholar John Wesley Powell, first director of the Department of Ethnology at the newly formed Smithsonian Institute (King, 2019).

Powell, who was considered to be one of America's top naturalists, spoke in 1886 before Washington. D. C.’s scientific elite, in which he attempted to lay out a vision for the future of ethnology, grounded in Morgan's ideas (King, 2019). Powell was anti-Darwinian in his ideas concerning cultural change, and argued that “There are stages of human culture”, and that human societies are assumed to progress from savagery to barbarism to civilization (King, 2019, p. 43; Powell, 1888). This model was fundamentally racist, assuming that only Europeans had achieved the stage of “civilized”. Examples provided of ‘savages’ included Lakota and Apache, and ‘barbarians’ oddly included the Chinese, but also the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederation, because Morgan had studied them as part of his research. This means that America's leading ethnologists were classifying their own Indigenous peoples as savages, if they were not yet under full government control, or they could be promoted to barbarism if they were apparently under control. No non-white people were considered ‘civilized.’

Anthropology has come a long way, and the growing importance of Ethnobiology has been crucial in getting scholars to consider relationships between the human and nonhuman aspects of ecology and ethnology. Since ethnobiology emphasizes both the way nonhuman life forms are treated and/or used by various human cultures, it has placed much more emphasis on the relationship between culture and ecology. Only in recent years has there been an emphasis on how Ethnobiology relates to Evolutionary thinking (e.g. Saslis-Lagoudakis and Clarke. 2013).

One recent approach to examining this relationship is Evolutionary Ethnobiology (Albuquerque, Ferreira, Santoro, Torres-Avilez, & Ribamar Sousa, 2015), in which a number of investigators address a range of topics linked to this theme. Despite the title, however, this volume is not really clear about what it means by ‘evolutionary’. Most of the examples in Evolutionary Ethnobiology deal with human activities and cultural evolution, emphasizing the use of nonhumans (especially plants) by human societies. This volume rarely discusses biological evolution, even when they are discussing overtly biological topics like niche construction. As an ecologist, Pierotti took an alternative approach in the volume Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology (2011), examining how Indigenous cultural traditions look at the nonhuman world, which reveals how Traditional Indigenous Knowledge contains numerous insights into both Ecological and Evolutionary processes, and that there exist areas where Indigenous knowledge may present greater insights into such processes than do Western approaches. These two contrasting approaches may be employed to complement one another as discussed in Saslis-Lagoudakis and Clarke (2013).

A long-standing debate has arisen concerning the links between Western science and the knowledge and cultural traditions of Indigenous peoples of North America, because Western Scientific traditions assume that experiments, rather than observation, take precedence within what they consider science (Fogg, Howe, & Pierotti, 2015; Pierotti, 2011). An insightful way of thinking about this from an Indigenous perspective is that behind every data point is a story (Chiasson, 2019). Western science concentrates on the data points, Indigenous thought emphasizes the stories. Thus, when viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology, stories from Indigenous cultural traditions almost certainly contain valuable insights and information relative to understanding how nature functions and how humans fit into the natural world (Pierotti, 2011; Pierotti & Fogg, 2017). What may be more important, however, is that in many cases Indigenous peoples had these ideas before Western science even considered the possibility of evolutionary change, well before the Enlightenment and the Western scientific tradition. Some scholars from the Western tradition have recently come to recognize this consilience as Western science has advanced, and accepted, phenomena recognized by Indigenous peoples, such as the existence of culture in nonhumans (de Waal, 2001; de Waal & Tyack, 2003; Saslis-Lagoudakis and Clarke. 2013; Whitehead, 2003; Whiten et al., 1999), the importance of cooperation relative to competition in impacting species dynamics, both intra and interspecific, and the existence of sophisticated mental processes in nonhumans (Heinrich, 1999; Pennisi, 2006; Pierotti, 1988; Pierotti & Fogg, 2017; Shouse, 2003; de Waal, 1995).

In this article, I update and expand upon specific examples where using an Ethnobiological perspective while doing research into Indigenous traditional cultures revealed understanding of phenomena linked to evolution well before evolutionary biologists developed similar concepts. In some cases, Western science originally believed in the opposite to what ethnobiological research revealed, and had to reverse their thinking as their sophistication grew, e.g. the importance of controlled burning (e.g. Anderson, 2005; Levy, 2005). The framing concept I discuss is the Indigenous understanding that natural environments fluctuate in constant and unpredictable ways, and that to survive and thrive, plant and animal populations (including humans) must be capable of coping with such variation (Pierotti, 2011, 2016, 2018). Indigenous peoples employ the concept that All Things are Connected, which has the same underlying logic as the Western science of Ecology to examine how species respond to varying environmental conditions, however, the Indigenous concept is thousands of years older (Pierotti, 2011).

This insight about All Things being Connected leads to three other important insights which reveal Indigenous perceptions of the natural world and how individuals and species change over time in response to environmental change: 1) Understanding of the importance of individuals in animal and plant populations and developing practices to protect individuals that contributed significantly to population maintenance and growth (Pierotti, 2010), 2) the comprehension that all organisms, including humans, constantly shape and reshape the environment in ways that affect conditions experienced by other species (Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003), which reveals ways that numerous species have developed to deal with the changeable natural world, and 3) Reticulate Evolution which reveals how genetic information can be exchanged among different unrelated individuals, allowing rapid evolutionary change and coordination of physiological processes (Gontier, 2015a, Gontier, 2015b; Margulis and Fester 1991; Ocaña-Pallarès, Najle, Scazzocchio, & Ruiz-Trillo, 2019). This process reveals how deeply All Things are Related, a second principle of Indigenous knowledge, which is obviously linked to evolutionary biology.

Understanding the importance of connection and relatedness allows Indigenous people to think of communities as including nonhumans, because in their traditions there is no distinction between social and ecological communities (Pierotti, 2011). Indigenous people discuss and represent connections and relatedness by employing stories that discuss phenomena that are constantly dynamic. “Today, the subjective experience of evolutionary universal aesthetics may drive human affinities for natural phenomena and scientists’ preferences in ecological research … (through) an evolutionary relationship between the biophysical environment, aesthetic responses, and cultural belief systems” (Lam and Gonzalez-Plaza 2006). Indigenous peoples also employ the metaphor of creator figures who are considered to manifest through the form of processes involving movement or change in state or condition of the environment. Such changes involve or impact the actions of many species. Community dynamics are revealed through close examination of plants and animals, including habitat use, growth patterns, seasonal changes, and interactions to discern important patterns (Lopez 2019).

Until the last few decades, Western intellectual traditions, including science, assumed that nature existed in a state of equilibrium, and that even when perturbed, nature would rebound to conditions of equilibrium essentially identical to those that existed prior to the perturbation (Pierotti, 2011, 2016). Figuring out how to survive in a fluctuating environment is a very different reality than living in ‘harmony’ with the Balance of Nature, as Indigenous life has often been caricatured (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000). Statements about the Western concept are found in Darwin (1859), “the forces are so nicely balanced that the face of nature remains uniform, for some time …” Such concepts continue into 21st century science by European investigators, e.g. “There is a balance, there is an almost permanence about such animal communities. We see the stability, the lack of change” (Kruuk, 2002). This idea was characterized as The Balance of Nature and served as a basic assumption of most models in ecology and evolution structured such that all systems tended to seek conditions of equilibrium (Kingsland, 1985, 1991, 2005).

In contrast, ethnobiological research has revealed most Indigenous knowledge has emerged from efforts to comprehend the nature of, and figure out how to survive within, variable and unpredictable environments (reviewed in Pierotti, 2011). Peoples established covenants with the natural world designed to reduce the negative impact of human actions. Many ceremonies and rituals, including sun dances, sweat lodges, and First Salmon ceremonies are linked to ecological knowledge and minimize negative impacts of hunting and food gathering in the same way that Western scientists use research protocols and animal care committees to minimize negative impacts in their study populations (Pierotti, 2011). Indigenous recognition of the changeable and unpredictable nature of ecological conditions and subsequent impacts upon communities, combined with the realization that changes could happen again, underlies the rituals involved in giving thanks to animals and plants after taking them for human use (Pierotti, 2011). Related ceremonies and rituals were based on recognizing non-equilibrium population dynamics combined with realization that the natural world was rarely “in balance” in the sense of remaining constant and unchanging.

In contrast, Ecologists from the Western tradition took their metaphor of “balance” literally; considering this as an accurate representation of how ecosystems functioned. Research questions were based upon the assumption that ‘balance,’ or equilibrium, was a state that ecosystems strove to attain. Associated with this metaphor was the assumption of the literal truth of the idea of ‘equilibrium’ communities and populations which reach a carrying capacity at which population numbers remain relatively constant (Kingsland, 1985, 1991; Pierotti, 2010, 2011, 2016). In the last few decades, many Western scientists have recognized the importance of changes and unpredictable fluctuations in environmental conditions, especially in light of climate change (Pierotti, 2016), however the classical models mentioned above that assume stability and equilibrium are still taught and used in research (Chapman & Byron, 2018; Kingsland, 1985, 1991, 2005).

Western resource management and conservation biology endeavor to develop management schemes for harvesting populations of fish, mammals, birds, and exploitable plants that maintain sufficiently high populations so that they can be harvested well into the future (Kingsland, 1985; Snider & Brimlow, 2013; Stokes, 2012). These models regularly fail, however, and ‘managed’ populations are driven close to commercial extinction because of the very practices employed to achieve ‘sustainability’ (Chapman & Byron, 2018, Chapters 3 and 4 in; Pierotti, 2011). The conceptual framework that contributes to these collapses results from the assumed balance within nature described above, combined with the concept that all individuals within a population are mutually interchangeable (Pierotti, 2010). Of course, this violates evolutionary principles in which variation is the basis of natural selection.

An alternative to management based on equilibrium-based approaches emerges from Indigenous traditions, who understand populations as collections of individuals, some of which can be readily taken by hunters or fishermen, while others should not be taken or even pursued (Pierotti, 2010). Research into both Evolution and Ethnobiology teaches that according to Indigenous concepts of nature, productivity in animal populations can be thought of as being regulated by specific individuals, characterized as “animal bosses”, “keepers of the game”, or “animal masters” (Martin, 1978; Nadasdy, 2003).

Western links to this Indigenous concept have been revealed by data from long-term scientific studies of natural populations, which have been carried out and published in the last forty years (see Clutton-Brock, 1988; Newton, 1989 for examples). These studies reveal unexpectedly high variability in individual lifetime reproductive performance that cannot be accounted for through basic population biology. Such findings revealed problems inherent in equilibrium-based harvest models (Pierotti, 2010).

To many Indigenous peoples of North America “animal, fish, and plant species functioned as societies … and each local band of a particular species was said to have its own boss … these beings were very real to (Indigenous people) … To see one of them was a rare privilege indeed” (Martin, 1978, p. 71). ‘Boss’ seems to be a recent anglicism; traditionally such individuals were described as ‘keepers of the game,’ and are characterized as entities that determine whether or not their species will continue to be available for exploitation by humans. The underlying assumption is that if humans are greedy and hunt to excess, the keepers will withdraw their species from being accessible to humans for food (Pierotti, 2010, 2011).

‘Keepers of the Game’ stories are often considered by Western anthropologists, including some Ethnobiologists, to involve spirits, or mythological constructs, which serve a symbolic purpose somewhat akin to Platonic ‘ideals’ (Pierotti, 2010). Traditions of ‘keepers’ are widespread and found among numerous tribal nations in almost all bioregions across North America (Table 1). These stories are likely to be based upon experiences with extraordinarily successful or experienced individual animals. As an example, recent research on Indigenous peoples in the Canadian north has revealed that:

The cry “Don't shoot the leaders!” is central to the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples across the Canadian North. For countless generations, northern Indigenous peoples have witnessed the annual caribou migrations, understanding their mechanisms and patterns. They know that if the caribou leading the migration are removed, the rest of the herd do not know where to migrate and will not return to the traditional harvesting grounds. A recent scientific study on the migratory behavior of hoofed animals also concludes that they learn from their conspecifics where and when to migrate (Kutz & Tomaselli, 2019).

Individual animals that function as guides are likely to be older, and more experienced. Their age combined with our knowledge from the studies just discussed, suggest that they have probably contributed a preponderance of recruits to their local population. If these individuals are killed, or even harassed, to such an extent that they are driven away, then a local population that depended upon their output could go ‘functionally extinct.’ This is equivalent to making their kind unavailable to humans, or of ‘taking away luck’ in hunting or trapping.

In the 1970's Western scientists began marking and studying individually recognizable animals in an effort to understand the evolution of behavior and social systems. The results of such studies were then used to examine individual variation in lifetime reproductive success (Newton, 1989). Long-term studies that provided data on lifetime reproductive success in birds and mammals all showed the same pattern, which is that 10% of a breeding population can generate up to 85% of the recruits to succeeding generations (Clutton-Brock, 1988). A recent example comes from a 50 year study of female Northern elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris, where it was found that, “Great variation in lifetime reproductive success (of 7735 female weaned pups) was evident in three aspects of life history: 1) 75% of the females died before reaching breeding age and produced no pups; 2) Nearly half of the survivors bred for only a few years before dying, and young females had low weaning success; 3) Less than 1% of the females in the sample were exceptionally successful producing up to 20 pups in life” (Le Boeuf, Condit, & Reiter, 2019; emphasis added). The authors of the study state, “We conclude that there is strong selection for increased lifespan and multiparous supermoms that contribute significantly to pup production in the next generation” (Le Boeuf et al., 2019, Stephens 2019).

Western science still seems unsure about how to incorporate these results into the way they think about population biology, because almost all models in population biology are based on the idea that individuals are interchangeable, i.e. if any individual is killed, it can simply be replaced by another individual of its gender (Pierotti, 2010, 2011). I have often been asked when describing my own research on this topic (Annett & Pierotti, 1999), whether the long-lived highly successful individuals can ‘be replaced’ when they die. The answer is no; another individual might occupy their territory or social role, but there is little chance that the new territory occupants will have their experience and knowledge of the local environment, or be able to replicate their success in producing new recruits. From an evolutionary perspective, this variation in Lifetime Reproductive Success is very important; it is the basis of natural selection.

One odd thing about Western science is that population biology and evolution use very different criteria for assessing the dynamics of populations. Population biology, using the performance of an, often nonexistent, average individual, to develop models that govern their policies, built on the idea that natural populations are ‘in balance’ (see above). In contrast, evolution and natural selection emphasize variation among individuals as the basis on which selection can act. As stressed by LeBeouf et al. (above) there is strong selection for survival and reproductive output of the best performing individuals.

In keeping with evolutionary thinking, Ethnobiological studies suggest that North American Indigenous peoples knew about the existence of important individuals, and integrated information about such entities into their combined knowledge and spiritual systems. As an example, the Kluane First Nation of Canada opposed sport hunting of Dall Sheep (Ovis dalli), because older more experienced (full curl) males are especially important to the overall sheep population because of their role as ‘teachers’ (Nadasdy, 2003, p. 280 note 7). This way of thinking is reinforced by the idea of not “shooting the leaders” in caribou (delete s, caribou is a plural noun) herds discussed above. In a similar vein, tribes dependent on Pacific salmon often “held prolonged celebrations following the capture of the first big salmon of the run - the celebrations could last up to ten days, during which no one fished, ensuring an abundant number of salmon would complete their migratory journey” (https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/first-nations-salmon-fisheries, accessed February 1, 2020); which is the fisheries version of not shooting the leaders.

These traditions are ancient. Evidence from studying the age structures of North American deer taken as prey by wolves (Canis lupus; Fritts & Mech, 1981) and by Aboriginal Americans in Wyoming prior to the arrival of Europeans (Simpson, 1984) reveal distinctly different patterns (Fig. 1). Wolves prey predominantly on the youngest and oldest members of the population (77% of all deer taken), which are presumed to be the most vulnerable individuals, and they take fewer individuals that are considered to be ‘prime-age’ (Fritts & Mech, 1981). In contrast, Aboriginal Americans took primarily younger individuals, i.e. fawns as well as ‘prime-age’ animals between two and four years of age (73%), which would be expected if they were concerned with not killing older individuals, which represented the elders (prime breeders) of the population.

The key evidence supporting this argument is the concentration of predation by humans on the juveniles, and of younger adults (two to four years of age), which wolves did not take (Fig. 1). Such individuals represent a significant percentage of the population, but would also consist largely of individuals that would predominantly be unsuccessful in the long-term as long-term studies on wild populations have revealed in recent years. For comparison, consider the elephant seal study where over 90% of the population did not survive past primiparity. Examination of distributions of long-term and lifetime success in birds and mammals have revealed that animals that survive to, or even past, prime adulthood are much more likely to both survive and reproduce in the future and contribute disproportionately to future cohorts (Annett & Pierotti, 1999; Clutton-Brock, 1988; Newton, 1989). Europeans, who were unaware that such variation existed among animals until the late 1980's, often considered stories that discussed such beings to be legends. In reality, however, stories about Keepers of the Game, and management schemes based on protecting the most experienced individuals within populations represent a realistic description of actual population dynamics within an evolutionary rather than a population biological perspective. Western heuristic tools applied to population management, have regularly demonstrated that they are not effective for managing populations of large long-lived, low fecundity species (Pierotti, 2010, 2011, Chapter 4).

A new conceptual development within 21st Century Evolutionary Biology is niche construction, a theoretical framework which assumes that all life forms substantially create their own ecological niches through a combination of metabolic processes and behavior (Lewontin, 2000; Odling-Smee et al., 2003). It is further recognized that such activities also impact the niches of other species within the same ecosystem, on scales ranging from very localized to global. Niche construction includes movement patterns, foraging activities, metabolic byproducts, even construction of new habitats. Resulting changes impact the selective environment faced by the constructors, as well as their offspring, and other species (Odling-Smee et al., 2003).

The concept of niche construction originated in arguments developed in an effort to establish that the processes of adaptation and natural selection were closely coupled (Lewontin, 2000). In the twentieth century, evolutionary biology assumed that natural selection pressures were decoupled from the process of adaptation, i.e., “The environment poses the problem,” to which “the organism posits solutions.” The best solution is finally ‘chosen’, i.e. favored by selection (Lewontin, cited in Odling-Smee et al., 2003, pp. 16–17). The most appropriate way to think of these processes, however, was, “Organisms do not adapt to their environments; they construct them out of the bits and pieces of the external world” (Lewontin, cited in Odling-Smee et al., 2003, p. 17). Under such conditions, selection pressures cannot be decoupled from adaptation, but interact with adaptive responses through feedback processes.

An earlier conception of some aspects of niche construction was the idea of Ecosystem Engineering, in which species were observed to create new environmental conditions that allow other species to exploit these new conditions (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). The difference between Ecological Engineering and Niche Construction is that the former emphasized ecological impacts and ignored selective effects, even though these might be considered implicit. The best-known ecosystem engineers are: 1) beavers, who reshaped the American landscape prior to the 17th century European invasion, and 2) termites that create huge constructions (nests) for their societies, within which dozens of other species can live, including other insects, fungi, bacteria, and even some birds and reptiles. Another prime example is sea otters, whose predation on sea urchins restructured subtidal and benthic environments along the Pacific coast of North America (Steneck et al., 2002). The major ecosystem engineers in Earth's history, however, were cyanobacteria, whose photosynthetic activities released oxygen, transforming the atmosphere a billion years ago, allowing the evolution of complex organisms that were dependent on oxygen for respiration (Odling -Smee et al., 2003, p. 12). The only serious competitor for these simple organisms has been Homo sapiens, who is transforming every aspect of life on earth through rapid changes in ground cover and atmospheric conditions, leading to global climate change.

Most examples of Niche Construction, however, are less obvious and require careful study to understand how they function. Lewontin (2000) characterizes such impacts as follows:

Light intensity, temperature, humidity, air movement and gaseous composition of the atmosphere in a forest all vary with height from the ground … microclimate near the soil surface is quite different from that between two lower leaves of a plant, which is again quite different from the microclimate for leaves near the growing tops of this plant … microclimatic variations play an extremely important role in growth and reproduction because … intensity of solar radiation and the CO2 concentration at the surface of the leaves determines the rate of photosynthesis and thus the growth rate and productivity … (which) determines the microenvironment, which (in turn) determines the rate of growth” (pp 56–57).

This variation in microhabitat leads to a different complex of insects, other arthropods, fungi, and bacteria, all adapted to specific microenvironments. In trees and forests, this also impacts the composition of bird and mammal communities. Thus, variation in microenvironment created by the plants produces a variety of niches which allow different microfaunas and microfloras to exist. Organisms must constantly adapt to these changing microenvironments, and in consequence must constantly adjust their phenotypes, or they could be impacted by natural selection and disappear locally (Odling-Smee et al., 2003).

Organisms not only contribute to flows of energy and matter; they may also control them. Organism-constructed sources of selection have been shown to buffer environmental variation, resulting in reduced variation in selection gradients, including both temporal and spatial variation (Clark, Deffner, LaLand, Odling-Smee, & Endler, 2019). Through such ecological modification, organisms alter natural selection pressures in both their own local selective environments, and selective environments experienced by other organisms (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). Such changes in the selective environment must last long enough to impact subsequent generations. These conditions are met if in each generation, individuals repeatedly change their ontogenetic environments in the same way, i.e. inheriting genes that express the same niche-constructing phenotypes. Modifying the selective environment also occurs when actions by the current generation persist long enough in their modified form that succeeding generations experience the change. Earthworms are a good example of this type of change, because their burrowing activities, which drag organic material into the soil, dramatically change both soil structure and chemistry. These changes impact soil structure, porosity, aeration and drainage, which in turn affect plant growth and survival. Earthworms themselves benefit from this extra plant growth, which increases availability of plant litter in the future, an important food source for the worms, which illustrates the positive feedback typical of such interactions.

If changes caused by organisms persist long enough to have strong selective impact on subsequent generations, this leads to a form of inheritance that differs from standard genetic inheritance of DNA. This is referred to in niche construction theory as Ecological Inheritance (Odling-Smee et al., 2003, pp. 12–16), and consists of whatever legacies are bequeathed by niche constructing ancestors to their descendants. This differs from genetic inheritance because no DNA based changes are involved. All that happens is that the physical changes caused by the ancestors cause a change in the ability of their descendants to persist in the same changed conditions, which resembles inheritance of territory or property more than inheritance of genes. This type of inheritance involves an intergenerational Common Environment Effect (Lindley & Singpurwalla, 1986), which functions as a confounding effect in studies of heritability, because offspring appear to inherit features shown by their ancestors. This similarity results not because of genetics, but simply because they inhabit the same environment.

I now return to Lewontin's argument (2000) that many selection pressures cannot be decoupled from the adaptive process, but interact with adaptive responses through feedback, because the selective environments of organisms are partly built by the niche-constructing activities of organisms. Although this seems circular, it is simply a result of the positive feedback discussed earlier. Thus, niche construction allows acquired characteristics to play a role in the evolutionary process and generate new adaptations in a non-Lamarckian fashion by influencing the selective environment that future generations will experience (see Okute discussion below). In essence, niche construction reveals how all things are connected in real terms, with organisms shaping the environments of other species, which in turn help the constructors themselves to persist.

The usefulness of the concept of niche construction to Ethnobiology has been recognized by several scholars (Albuquerque et al., 2015; Neto & Albuquerque, 2018; Smith, 2007, 2011), almost all of whom concentrate their efforts on examining human activities, specifically cultural evolution and domestication of plants and animals, where connections between species are obvious. These studies note that, as mentioned above, Homo sapiens is one of the primary species involved in niche construction at a global scale. Many of the changes produced by human activities have negative impacts, however some human actions seem to be positive. Positive cases include domestication that involves co-evolution between humans and other organisms, such as our relationships with carnivores, such as dogs and cats, where each species has major influences on the evolution of the other, leading to a vast increase in the number of individuals alive in the world, e.g. wolves (dogs) and humans (Pierotti & Fogg, 2017).

Important as these studies are, one issue that often goes unconsidered is how the concept of niche construction maps closely onto Indigenous concepts of community and connectedness among all life forms, which emerge from Indigenous concepts of creation. Not only do Indigenous people recognize that All Things are Connected, but also that All Things are Related. Indigenous cultures assumed that relatedness emerged through ecological rather than genetic relationships (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000). Combined with recognition of constant change, Indigenous people recognized that conditions at present were, at best, a general indicator of how conditions might be in the future (Pierotti, 2011). This required that these cultures employ a dynamic world view (Pierotti 2018), and develop stories that explained how the world was shaped through dynamic interactions among organisms and their physical environments. In Indigenous cultures, unusual events are often attributed to the activities of “spirits”, although this English term is inadequate to translate the actual meaning of the concept:

In the realm of “scientific” knowledge, the European tradition uses the metaphor of a statistically ‘average’ event to carry more weight than the single ‘unusual’ event. Within Indigenous knowledge traditions, however, such “spiritual” causes or happenings are not seen as ‘supernatural.’ Thus, they are not outside the realm of what is real, but part of the natural order of things and thus readily subject to interpretation and understanding (Pierotti, 2011, p 8).

Indigenous oral traditions recognize the existence of multiple creative forces that function in concert to shape the world. Entities with the power to signal transformations, to portend changes in the environment, or who transform themselves to adapt to the larger context or environmental conditions, also reveal how to manage and overcome the odds in order to thrive (Howe, 2019).

The most effective way to evaluate creation stories is by understanding patterns which derive from nature itself and determine if the pattern can be discerned in the story. An example can be seen in the use of ‘Buffalo Jumps’ as ways of taking bison prior to the availability of horses. Tribes learned to employ this method from working with and observing how wolves take bison using this technique (Barsh and Marlor. 2003; Fogg et al., 2015). Western scholarship emphasizes only the human/bison interaction and argues that if more bison are killed than humans can consume, this results in waste (e.g. Krech, 1999a). Native people observed that this dynamic process involved much more than the humans and the bison, and also included wolves, coyotes, crows, ravens, magpies, and other species (Barsh and Marlor. 2003). Even if the humans could not use all of the meat, many other organisms obtained food, and all the bison killed were consumed. From the perspective of the ecological community, there was no waste. This explains why in the story of the Great Race told by the Tsitsista (Cheyenne) people, every species in the community participated in the race to determine whether humans would eat bison or vice versa. Humans were recognized by birds to be more cooperative than bison, thus the birds helped the humans to win (Grinnell, 1926). Stories instruct humans how to live effectively in a nonhuman world, and to humbly accept that this world was not constructed solely for humans. Creation stories are based in behavior or habits of the animals, weather, rivers, or plants, and involve biological and geological aspects observed by many Indigenous peoples (Howe, 2019, LaPier 2015).

Such stories relate to niche construction because both conceptual frameworks assume that processes occurring within an ecosystem directly shape the interactions and features of both the physical environment and the organisms who inhabit that landscape. Native people regard specific events as part of an ongoing pattern that emerges from ecological processes (Pierotti, 2011). When an individual animal is encountered it is recognized that the humans present experience the event as being in a state which is unfolding, and the humans must understand it as part of an emerging pattern (Lopez 2019, p. 168). This can be thought of as requiring a story to examine the phenomenon, rather than a snapshot or a data set.

Creation stories emphasize both the process and unpredictability of life and reveal that it is often necessary to change in response to changes in the environment (Pierotti, 2011). The Western scientific term for such a process is, of course, adaptation, which reinforces the idea that Indigenous creator figures can be considered as forces which generate adaptive responses on the part of both human and nonhuman organisms. Both niche construction and creation stories involve apparent directional activity within an unpredictably varying environment, which helps resolve a major question in evolutionary biology, i.e. why does there seem to be evidence of purpose and directed outcomes within a system resulting from apparently random events?

As an example of how the perspective of Plains tribes views the functioning of, and relationships between organisms and ecosystems, let us carefully examine the 1911 statement of Okute (Shooter), a Teton Lakota (McLuhan 1971):

“Animals and plants are taught by Wakan Tanka (the Lakota creative force) what they are to do. Wakan Tanka teaches the birds to make nests, yet the nests of all birds are not alike. Wakan Tanka gives them merely the outline. Some make better nests than others … Some animals also take better care of their young than others … All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals, and with human beings. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here to be an independent individual and to rely upon itself … From my boyhood I have observed leaves, trees, and grass, and I have never found two alike. They may have a general likeness, but on examination I have found that they differ slightly. It is the same with animals … It is the same with human beings, there is some place which is best adapted to eachAn animal depends upon the natural conditions around it. If the buffalo were here today, I think they would be very different from the buffalo of the old days because all the natural conditions have changed. They would not find the same food, nor the same surroundings We see the same change in our ponies … It is the same with the Indians … “(McLuhan 1971, emphasis added)

This account by an early 20th Century Lakota can be regarded as an Indigenous story about microevolutionary change, including the emphasis on variation mentioned in the previous section (Pierotti, 2011). The phrase “there is some place which is best adapted to each,” goes to the root of niche construction, especially in the way it inverts the idea that the organism is the entity that is adapted, and suggests that the way to consider the relationship is that the place where it lives is what has changed, which in turn causes a change on the part of the organism.

In Indigenous tradition, adaptability of all forms is considered to be a valuable characteristic, for it ultimately determines successful survival. This need not be a genetic form of adaptation, but a phenotypically based response to the changing environment (Lewontin, 2000).

Indigenous Creator figures are sometimes described as ‘tricksters,’ e.g. Raven in the Pacific Northwest and the Arctic (Pierotti, 2011). The standard definition of ‘trickster’ follows this model: “Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself … He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social … yet through his actions, all values come into being” (Radin, 1972, p xxiii). All tricksters are to some degree “culture heroes”, and, “in the most archaic hunting cultures of North America trickster and hero roles are always combined in the same figure” (Ricketts, 1966). Trickster/Creator figures' most notable strengths involve their ability to adapt and transform. Thus, Trickster/Creators can be considered as ‘spirits’ of niche construction, allowing them to avoid being locked into any specific physical identity (Pierotti, 2011). Creation stories reveal how humans are expected to fit within a nonhuman world, not constructed solely for humans.

Native American links with other life forms involve understanding how these plastic processes function, rather than focusing on outcomes such as fixed physical entities. Western understanding tends to concentrate on fixed or expected outcomes rather than the processes that produce these entities (Lopez 2019; Pierotti, 2011). To Indigenous Americans, understanding plants begins with the seed, then the root, and analyzes the form of every leaf (see Okute quote above). Similarly, with animals, Indigenous thought concerns itself with the stages of development in animals from egg through juvenile to mature adult. In all of these phenomena, humans seek parallels, comparisons, and contrasts with themselves; recognizing this level of detail is how the ‘human’ is revealed and defined as part of the ecosystem (Howe, 2019).

Comparing material versus theoretical contrasts in Western constructs of knowledge requires separation between the physical (empirical) and metaphysical. Indigenous people begin by observing the physical, and proceed to encompass metaphysical aspects, where stories emphasize connections at all levels (Kelly, 2017; Pierotti, 2011). Foraging and overall movement activities of animals are regularly discussed through stories (Howe, 2019, LaPier 2015). Creation stories teach humans to observe that all beings leave their marks in the environment, which serve to establish the role of place, as well as the larger ecological, social, and relational levels both within and among species. This can be illustrated by the example of an elder, superior hunter named Moose Jackson.

Moose said he can tell by looking at moose tracks how old they are … where the sun was at the time the moose was there and the direction the wind was blowing. This information, combined with his knowledge of moose behavior, is enough for him to know where the moose was going and what it was doing … This information is enough to tell him where the moose is … he does not actually have to follow the moose tracks, he merely goes to where he knows the moose will be (Nadasdy, 2003: 107, emphasis added).

To counteract such detailed knowledge, animals often detect humans easily and find ways to outsmart or outrun them, however the knowledge retained by elders and experienced hunters might overcome this, as described above. These tactics are an exercise in respecting the animals' desire to live, while finding a way to keep one step ahead of its consciousness, because humans sometimes want to kill it, for food, shelter, clothing, etc. If the animal's intention to remain alive enables it to escape, the humans will go hungry, and if this pattern persists, may even perish (Howe, 2019). Along this line of thinking, examples of niche construction can include permanent trails or habitations created by and used by numerous individuals across millennia (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). Animals provided support in the forms of food, clothing, and shelter, and their feeding activities created soil that produced the rich flora that humans could eat—berries, tubers, roots, bulbs, and herbs (Howe, 2019).

An illustration of this last theme can be seen in a recently published paper on the role of bison (Bison bison) in shaping grassland ecology (Geremia et al., 2019). This work showed that “grasses heavily grazed by bison were more productive compared to exclosures where bison where not allowed to graze … mowed-down forage had higher ratios of nitrogen to carbon, a standard measure of nutritional quality. And the green-up was earlier, faster, more intense and lasted longer.” In other words, where Yellowstone bison congregate, plant green-up is different, which is not the result of local weather—the bison and their intense grazing are the cause. By continually mowing the grass through grazing, and trampling the ground with thousands of hooves, the grasslands “green up faster, more intensely, and for a longer duration” (Geremia et al., 2019). Thus, bison function as niche constructors of their own food sources, something also known from their creation of ‘buffalo wallows’, both by creating ephemeral ponds that change plant communities (Uno, 1989) and arthropod community heterogeneity (Nickell, Varriano, Plemmons, & Moran, 2018). As a result of Ethnobiological research, we know that Indigenous peoples of America's Great Plains understood the importance of this species to themselves and other species.

Stories about such dynamics reveal interactions among the multiple players within their ecosystem, making life possible. In the mountains and semi-arid plains of North America, the presence of water, in all its various forms, in conjunction with the sun's energy, explains the basis of life. The stories themselves are shorthand, condensed knowledge of countless generations of observations. They derive from nature's cycles and are never exactly the same; they are about nature, the weather, and animal and plant cycles (Howe, 2019). Telling such stories derives from the ethos of the land: winter comes and goes, Sun goes up and down in the sky every day, the spring brings the birds and berries, as well as engorged rivers from snowmelt; these cycles recur but never in exactly the same way.

Niitsitapii (Blackfoot) peoples attribute the actions of their creator figure, Naapi (or Napi), to movement or a change in state or condition of the environment, as revealed through the actions of all species (Bastien, 2004; Howe, 2019). Bastien points out that the Blackfoot have a term Aotsistapitshk Maanistsihp, which means both Knowing (p 224), Understanding of how the order of things (natural laws) are, or consciousness of the natural order of things (p 218). Another Blackfoot term, Akaotsisstapi'takyo'p, means sacred science, or experiential knowing (Bastien, 2004, pp. 219, 224). Naapi stories are rooted in movement; specifically, in points of transformation between types of matter or in their locations (Bullchild, 1985; Howe, 2019). As Bastien describes it, “spirit or force that links concepts, or life force” (p. 221). As in niche construction theory, adaptability is a most admired and valued characteristic, because it ultimately determines successful survival. To become better equipped to live, it is necessary to observe and learn to change to reflect the changes going on all around (Pierotti, 2011).

The Blackfoot expression Mokakit ki akakimaat, which means “to be strong and persevere,” is said to be an expression learned from Wolf (Barsh & Marlor, 2003); a teaching about having staying power or stamina for life, and referring to the difference between simply surviving and thriving (Howe, 2019). The expression “We are all relatives” reveals understanding of connections to the natural world, and to all living beings, weaving together and expressing the sharing of space, time, matter, energy, etc., that give form to the human world (Pierotti, 2011). The roots of many creation stories lie specifically in points of transformation between types of matter, the locations where these processes take place, or even the force of expression of their direction of movement (Howe, 2019).

Knowledge is built into the culture through the form of ceremonial traditions that make special note of certain elements, shared space, or other beings affected by changes in the environment. These understandings are the basis for strict laws and social expectations for relationships told through creation stories (Howe, 2019). Ceremonies and rituals practiced by various peoples, e.g. sun dances, first salmon ceremonies, outline and define the nature of knowledge itself. Life forms, and their dynamic interactions, are a result of powerful, yet unpredictable, creative forces, endlessly occupied with the task of making new life, and of reforming what already exists, which is similar to arguments made under niche construction theory. Adapting to the landscape and acknowledging kinship among lifeforms involve processes that acknowledge a constructive influence (Howe, 2019).

Some think that Indigenous people invoke supernatural forces in characterizing creator stories and traditions, however, it is important to keep in mind that ‘spirit’ is simply a term used to describe creative energies that reside in specific places within local landscapes, and does not necessarily imply the ‘supernatural’ (Western scholars often assume that anything outside of contemporary knowledge involves the ‘supernatural’: Howe, 2019). This does not mean that there are no supernatural concepts among Indigenous Americans, simply that they employ a different metaphysics than the dominant culture. As an example, both Okute (above) and Naapi stories assume that one major creative force is the sun, or solar radiation, which obviously influences life. Animals, plants, and places are appreciated for their traits, medicines, and sustenance they provide. As discussed above, Keepers of the Game within species (Martin, 1978) have the ability to adapt to the larger environment, and alter the population dynamics of their species (Pierotti, 2010). The actions of these individuals function to shape space occupied by both humans and nonhumans which should be how ethnobiologists think about niche construction theory (Clark et al., 2019; Odling-Smee et al., 2003). Indigenous peoples do not believe the world was created by humans, for humans, and only about humans, where humans assume center stage of all things in life (Howe, 2019).

Indigenous peoples’ perspectives regard the entirety of creation as the foundation on which social and societal rules and customs are built (Pierotti, 2011; Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000). In the Blackfoot universe, Naapi stories guide the People to avoid upsetting the inherent balance of the environment by killing or taking beyond necessity, which is understood to be a true source of death (Howe, 2019). Moral customs and practices derived from understanding and application of ecological principles become core Naapi teachings, because the Blackfoot interpret these stories as being simultaneously ecological and social (Howe, 2019). Creation stories grounding for teaching lies in their biological, physical, and sustainable features, which encompass and express moral and social mores. The ultimate meaning of these stories is not a human-on-human debate; they deal with the matter of laws established by nature (Howe, 2019).

Creation stories represent a form of shorthand, in a manner similar to the way mathematical models function in Western concepts of ecology and evolutionary biology, however, in this case, the condensed knowledge of countless generations of observations discusses the patterns that are observed in nature through their oral traditions (Kelly, 2017; Pierotti, 2010, 2011). As a recent example, scholar Maria Nieves Zedeno (2018) argues when discussing the Blackfoot creator figure Napi, in her presentation, Napi is the Environment, “more recent traditions further show how, through the humanization of environmental processes, the Blackfoot retain deep-time memories of the ancestors and the homeland.” https://archaeology.stanford.edu/events/workshops/napi-environment-looking-peopling-north-america-through-eyes-blackfoot-creation accessed January 2, 2020).

Another way in which creative forces within living systems can be understood is by looking at previously unconsidered ways in which evolution may function. Traditionally, Western taxonomists and systematists have argued that diversification within groups of organisms have assumed the structure of a dichotomously branching tree or bush. In recent years, along with niche construction theory, evidence has been found by evolutionary biologists that the initial stages of life were characterized by lateral or horizontal gene transfer between separate organisms, rather than by direct changes within lineages. “Horizontal gene transfer (HGT; also known as lateral gene transfer) is the non-sexual movement of genetic information between genomes. Incoming DNA or RNA can replace existing genes, or can introduce new genes into a genome” (Keeling & Palmer, 2008).

This challenges the concept of common descent and suggests that the ancestral form of life may not have been an individual, but a community of entities with a common physical history, rather than a genealogical one (Gallardo, 2017). This set of phenomena are characterized as reticulate evolution, which involves cooperative exchanges of genetic material between different lineages. Examples include Lateral or Horizontal gene transfer, interspecific hybridization, and changes in ploidy (number of sets of chromosomes) within lineages, which can produce new lineages almost instantaneously.

If niche construction presents a means to recognize how All Things are Connected is revealed, then reticulate evolution shows, in real terms, how All Things are Related. It reveals relationships of which no one was aware prior to the use of DNA sequencing, even the most sophisticated evolutionary biologists. Indigenous cultures did not look at molecules, or even at cells, as part of their understanding of their environments, because investigating these phenomena required a level of machine technology that Indigenous peoples never tried to develop (Pierotti, 2011, Chapter 11, Afterword). What I suggest in the case of reticulate evolution is that this is an area where Indigenous thinking and Western technological skill can be combined to produce new and powerful insights into how life actually functions, while allowing a more sophisticated view of living systems, based on cooperation rather than competition, and changing the concept that we have to rely on either-or dichotomies to develop a philosophical basis for our understanding of how life-forms evolve in a real and complex world. As an example, “Synergies between ethnobiology, evolutionary biology, and ecology are starting to appear more frequently in the literature and have resulted in remarkable outcomes. For example, ethnobotanical observations, coupled with DNA sequencing, have helped elucidate ecological preferences of poorly known species, such as the South American tapir …” (Saslis-Lagoudakis and Clarke. 2013, p. 67).

This can be further seen in the Ethnobiological approach taken by Eduardo Kohn in his book, How Forests Think: Towards an Anthropology Beyond the Human (2013), in which he argues that “encounters with other kinds of beings force us to recognize the fact that seeing, representing, and perhaps knowing, even thinking, are not exclusively human affairs” (1). Kohn illustrates this argument by demonstrating how flexible roles can be in the ecology of a tropical forest from the perspective of the Runa people of the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon. He points out that “Who is predator and who is prey is contextually dependent … and that such relationships sometimes become reversed,” (119) i.e. if a jaguar dies it becomes food for other beings which may have formerly been its prey. In addition, Kohn emphasizes how all “the life forms that make-up the rain forest, are selves” (Kohn 2013, 96–97). A similar situation prevails in Horizontal Gene Transfer where bacteria, fungi and plants exchange multiple genes (Bruto, Prigent-Combaret, Luis, Moënne-Loccoz, & Muller, 2014; Keeling & Palmer, 2008). In this case, life forms originally considered to be parasitic in their ecological function can be seen as sharing selves, that turn out to be beneficial, cooperative, and ultimately function as collective niche constructors.

Extensive exchange of genetic information between mitochondrial genomes of different plants is now well documented, providing the highest known levels of eukaryote–eukaryote transfer (Keeling & Palmer, 2008). Such exchanges take place where roots of trees surrounded by fungal hyphae exchange both nutrients and genetic material, which increases efficiency and survival of both species, because the fungi provide nutrients, and the plants produce the food. Numerous Indigenous stories talk about communication between trees and other species (Marshall 1995), which is what the recent work in gene transfer and communication really represents. In this case we can see that different species are related, because these species are connected, thus linking these concepts in the way they are perceived by Indigenous peoples.

Another way that such beliefs are illustrated in Indigenous thought can be seen in stories in which it is emphasized that different species are described as siblings (e.g. wolf and coyote) (Figure 2; Pierotti, 2011; Pierotti & Fogg, 2017), which suggests that they have a close relationship. Despite being recognized as different species, wolves and coyotes regularly exchange genes through interbreeding, especially in areas where wolves have been previously extirpated through EuroAmerican actions. Wolf genes return to ecosystems where the wolves themselves have been driven out, through the exchange of genetic material with their relative coyote to create a new form of predator, carrying features of both species forward (Pierotti & Fogg, 2017). This is an example of the environment being changed as a result of wolf extirpation by humans, however the wolves responded by interbreeding with their relative coyote, and reintroducing themselves to habitats from which they had been driven by human activities.

Interestingly, Western scientists studying reticulate evolution, particularly horizontal gene transfer, emphasize cooperation and unexpected forms of relatedness among different organisms to the extent that we are recognizing that evolution need not always be thought of as involving dichotomous branching (e.g. Gallardo 2017). Research in DNA sequencing, which originally seemed to be reductionist, has revealed hybrid speciation, introgression, horizontal gene transfer (even between embryos in a female's womb), all of which suggest that life, and genetic inheritance, is nowhere as simple as we thought, even 20 years ago. When I teach these phenomena to my Native American students, or discuss this with my non-white colleagues, they are excited by the implications to empowering their own cultural traditions. Some have even been encouraged to start reading books on evolutionary biology; unfortunately, these books are years behind the latest findings I describe, so I have to be careful in what readings I recommend.

These findings have shown me that many of the non-western traditions under which I was raised, and that I have explored during my career, may be far more useful in the future, and may even become well-established perspectives in evolutionary thinking.

Section snippets

Conclusions

American Indigenous peoples do not believe the world was created by humans, for humans, or that humans assume center stage concerning all things, as is true of Western tradition. To Indigenous peoples all of creation, i.e. nature, is the foundation on which social and societal rules and customs are built through the twinned concepts of connectedness and relatedness (Pierotti, 2011; Zedeno, 2018). As shown in the examples discussed above, moral customs and practices derived from understanding

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Raymond Pierotti: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Investigation, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

References (73)

  • U.P. Albuquerque et al.

    Niche construction theory and ethnobiology

  • M.K. Anderson

    Tending the wild: Native American knowledge and the management of California's natural resources

    (2005)
  • C.A. Annett et al.

    Longterm reproductive output and recruitment in western gulls: Consequences of alternate foraging tactics

    Ecology

    (1999)
  • R.L. Barsh et al.

    Driving Bison and Blackfoot science

    Human Ecology

    (2003)
  • B. Bastien

    Blackfoot ways of knowing: The worldview of the siksikaitsitapi

    (2004)
  • M. Benedict et al.

    Learning from the land: Incorporating indigenous perspectives into the plant sciences

  • M. Bruto et al.

    Frequent, independent transfers of a catabolic gene from bacteria to contrasted filamentous eukaryotes

    Proc. R. Soc. B

    (2014)
  • P. Bullchild

    The sun came down: The history of the world as my blackfeet elders tell it

    (1985)
  • E.J. Chapman et al.

    The flexible application of carrying capacity in ecology

    Global Ecology and Conservation

    (2018)
  • D. Chiasson

    Reader I googled it

    The New Yorker

    (2019)
  • A.D. Clark et al.

    Niche construction affects the variability and strength of natural selection

    The American Naturalist

    (2019)
  • C. Darwin

    The Origin of species by means of natural selection

    (1859)
  • F.B. de Waal

    Good-natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals

    (1995)
  • F.B. de Waal

    The ape and the sushi master

    (2001)
  • F.B. de Waal et al.

    Animal social complexity: Intelligence, culture and individualized societies

    (2003)
  • B.R. Fogg et al.

    Relationships between indigenous American peoples and wolves 1: Wolves as teachers and guides

    Journal of Ethnobiology

    (2015)
  • S.H. Fritts et al.

    Dynamics, movements and feeding ecology of a newly protected wolf population in northwestern Minnesota. Wildlife Monograph 80

    (1981)
  • M.H. Gallardo

    Phylogenetics, reticulation and evolution

  • C. Geremia et al.

    Migrating bison engineer the green wave

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    (2019)
  • N. Gontier

    Reticulate evolution: Symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, Hybridization and infectious heredity

    (2015)
  • N. Gontier

    Reticulate evolution everywhere

  • G.B. Grinnell

    By Cheyenne campfires

    (1926)
  • B. Heinrich

    The mind of the raven: Investigations and adventures with wolf-birds

    (1999)
  • N. Howe

    Retelling trickster in Naapi's language

    (2019)
  • P. Keeling et al.

    Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution

    Nature Review of Genetics

    (2008)
  • L. Kelly

    The memory code: The secrets of stonehenge, easter island, and other ancient monuments

    (2017)
  • C. King

    Gods of the upper air: How a circle of renegade anthropologists reinvented race, sex and gender in the twentieth century

    (2019)
  • S.E. Kingsland

    Modeling nature: Episodes in the history of population ecology

    (1985)
  • S.E. Kingsland

    Defining ecology as a science

  • S.E. Kingsland

    The evolution of American ecology 1890-2000

    (2005)
  • S. Krech

    The ecological Indian: Myth and history

    (1999)
  • H. Kruuk

    Hunter and hunted: Relationships between carnivores and people

    (2002)
  • S. Kutz et al.

    “Two-eyed seeing” supports wildlife health

    Science

    (2019)
  • M.E. Lam et al.

    Evolutionary universal aesthetics in ecological rationality

    Journal of Ecological Anthropology

    (2006)
  • R.R. LaPier

    The piegan view of the natural world, 1880-1920

    (2015)
  • Cited by (1)

    View full text