Ecological inheritance

Ecological inheritance occurs when an organism's offspring inhabit a modified environment that a previous generation created. Therefore, the selective pressures created from the modifications must remain for the next generation in order for it to be deemed ecological inheritance. It was first described in Odling-Smee (1988) and Odling-Smee et al. (1996) as a consequence of niche construction. Standard evolutionary theory focuses on the influence that natural selection and genetic inheritance has on biological evolution, when individuals that survive and reproduce also transmit genes to their offspring. If offspring do not live in a modified environment created by their parents, then niche construction activities of parents do not affect the selective pressures of their offspring (see orb-web spiders in Genetic inheritance vs. ecological inheritance below). However, when niche construction affects multiple generations (i.e., parents and offspring), ecological inheritance acts an inheritance system different than genetic inheritance which is also termed "legacy effects".

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.