Coevolution of multiple species through niche construction modifying shared environments | Artificial Life and Robotics Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Coevolution of multiple species through niche construction modifying shared environments

  • Special Feature: Original Article
  • Published:
Artificial Life and Robotics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Niche construction is a process whereby organisms, through their metabolism, activities, and choices, modify their own and/or each other’s niches. Our purpose is to clarify the interactions between evolution and niche construction by focusing on non-linear interactions between genetic and environmental factors shared by interacting species. We constructed a new fitness landscape model termed the NKES model by introducing environmental factors and their interactions with genetic factors into Kauffman’s NKCS model. The evolutionary experiments were conducted using hill-climbing and niche-constructing processes on this landscape. The results have shown that the average fitness among species strongly depends on the ruggedness of the fitness landscape (K) and the degree of the effect of niche construction on genetic factors (E). Especially, we observed two different roles of niche construction: moderate perturbations on hill-climbing processes on the rugged landscapes, and the strong constraint which yields the convergence to a stable state. Also, we show that the difference in the structures of (direct or indirect) interactions among species drastically changes the coevolutionary process of the whole ecosystem by comparing the evolutionary dynamics of the NKES model with that of the NKCS model.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

Notes

  1. In this paper, the term niche refers to evolutionary niche defined by Odling-Smee et al., that means the sum of all the natural selection pressures to which the population is exposed [2].

References

  1. Odling-Smee FJ (1988) Niche constructing phenotypes. In: Plotkin HC (ed) The role of behavior in evolution, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 73–132

  2. Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, Feldman MW (2003) Niche construction—the neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton

  3. Laland KN, Odling-Smee FJ, Feldman MW (1996) Evolutionary consequences of niche construction: a theoretical investigation using two-locus theory. J Evol Biol 9:293–316

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Ihara Y, Feldman MW (2004) Cultural niche construction and the evolution of small family size. Theor Popul Biol 65:105–111

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Silver M, Di Paolo E (2006) Spatial effects favour the evolution of niche construction. Theor Popul Biol 70:387–400

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Taylor T (2004) Niche construction and the evolution of complexity. In: Proceedings of the ninth international conference on the simulation and synthesis of living systems (ALIFE IX), Boston, pp 375–380

  7. Suzuki R, Arita T (2006) How spatial locality can affect the evolution of niche construction. In: Proceedings of the tenth international conference on the simulation and synthesis of living systems (ALIFE X), Bloomington, pp 452–458

  8. Suzuki R, Arita T (2010) Effects of temporal locality of ecological processes on coevolution of learning and niche construction. In: Proceedings of the twelfth international conference on the simulation and synthesis of living systems (ALIFE XII), Odense, pp 471–477

  9. Yamauchi H, Hashimoto T (2010) Relaxation of selection, niche construction, and the Baldwin effect in language evolution. Artif Life 16(4):271–287

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Bown O, McCormack J, Kowaliw T (2011) Ecosystemic methods for creative domains: niche construction and boundary formation. In: Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE symposium on artificial life, Paris, pp 132–139

  11. Hui C, Li Z, Yue D (2004) Metapopulation dynamics and distribution, and environmental heterogeneity induced by niche construction. Ecol Model 177:107–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Harvey I (2004) Homeostasis and rein control: from daisyworld to active perception. In: Proceedings of the ninth international conference on the simulation and synthesis of living systems (ALIFE IX), USA, pp 309–314

  13. Williams H, Noble J (2005) Evolution and the regulation of environmental variables. In: Proceedings of the eighth European conference on artificial life (ECAL 2005), Canterbury, pp 332–341

  14. Dyke JG, Weaver IS (2013) The emergence of environmental homeostasis in complex ecosystems. PLoS Comput Biol. 9(5):1003050

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Lenton TM (1998) Gaia and natural selection. Nature 394:439–447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Suzuki R, Arita T (2005) Evolution and niche construction in NKES fitness landscape. In: Proceedings of the tenth international symposium on artificial life and robotics, Oita, pp 493–496

  17. Suzuki R, Arita T (2005) How niche construction can guide coevolution. In: Proceedings of the eighth European conference on artificial life (ECAL 2005), Canterbury, pp 373–382

  18. Kauffman S (1993) The origins of order: self-organization and selection in evolution. Oxford University Press, USA

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, 464-8601, Japan

    Reiji Suzuki & Takaya Arita

Authors
  1. Reiji Suzuki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Takaya Arita
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reiji Suzuki.

About this article

Cite this article

Suzuki, R., Arita, T. Coevolution of multiple species through niche construction modifying shared environments. Artif Life Robotics 18, 144–151 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-013-0116-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-013-0116-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation