Foraging and farming as niche construction: stable and unstable adaptations
Foraging and farming as niche construction: stable and unstable adaptations
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2010.0307
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发表时间：
2011-03-27
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Layton, Robert
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Rowley-Conwy, Peter;Layton, Robert
所有的采集者（或狩猎采集者）社会都在积极地构建生态位，其中许多人通过将野生植物集中到有用的林分中，小规模种植，燃烧自然植被以鼓励有用的物种，以及各种形式的狩猎，统称为“低水平食物生产”。许多这样的生态位是稳定的，可以无限期地持续下去，因为觅食种群通常是稳定的。有些是不稳定的，但这些通常转化为其他觅食利基，而不是地理上广阔的农业利基。在近东的Epipalaeolithic（最后的狩猎采集者）生态位是复杂的，但稳定的，人口密度相对较高，直到不稳定的突然气候变化。由于一些野生动植物物种的偶然遗传和行为属性，生态位无意中转变为农业生态位。农业生态位可以通过修改出口到大部分旧世界。这是由人口大规模增长推动的，并对农业生态位所在的当地人民、动物和植物产生了巨大影响。在某些地区，农业生态位可能暂时接近稳定，但过去11000年的历史并不表明农业是实现世界农业人口人口和政治稳定的有效战略。
All forager (or hunter-gatherer) societies construct niches, many of them actively by the concentration of wild plants into useful stands, small-scale cultivation, burning of natural vegetation to encourage useful species, and various forms of hunting, collectively termed 'low-level food production'. Many such niches are stable and can continue indefinitely, because forager populations are usually stable. Some are unstable, but these usually transform into other foraging niches, not geographically expansive farming niches. The Epipalaeolithic (final hunter-gatherer) niche in the Near East was complex but stable, with a relatively high population density, until destabilized by an abrupt climatic change. The niche was unintentionally transformed into an agricultural one, due to chance genetic and behavioural attributes of some wild plant and animal species. The agricultural niche could be exported with modifications over much of the Old World. This was driven by massive population increase and had huge impacts on local people, animals and plants wherever the farming niche was carried. Farming niches in some areas may temporarily come close to stability, but the history of the last 11 000 years does not suggest that agriculture is an effective strategy for achieving demographic and political stability in the world's farming populations.