In both natural and artificial studies, evolution is often seen as synonymous to natural selection. Individuals evolve under pressures set by environments that are either reset or do not carry over significant changes from previous generations. Thus, niche construction (NC), the reciprocal process to natural selection where individuals incur inheritable changes to their environment, is ignored. Arguably due to this lack of study, the dynamics of NC are today little understood, especially in real-world settings. In this work, we study NC in simulation environments that consist of multiple, diverse niches and populations that evolve their plasticity, evolvability and niche-constructing behaviors. Our empirical analysis reveals many interesting dynamics, with populations experiencing mass extinctions, arms races and oscillations. To understand these behaviors, we analyze the interaction between NC and adaptability and the effect of NC on the population's genomic diversity and dispersal, observing that NC diversifies niches. Our study suggests that complexifying the simulation environments studying NC, by considering multiple and diverse niches, is necessary for understanding its dynamics and can lend testable hypotheses to future studies of both natural and artificial systems.

翻译：在自然与人工系统研究中，进化常被视为自然选择的同义词。个体在环境设定的压力下进化，这些环境或被重置，或未继承前代群体的显著变化。因此，生态位构建（Niche Construction, NC）——即个体对自身环境施加可遗传改变、与自然选择形成互逆的过程——被长期忽视。或许正因缺乏系统研究，目前对NC动态机制的理解仍十分有限，尤其在真实世界情境中。本研究通过模拟环境探究NC机制，该环境包含多个多样性生态位以及具有可塑性、可进化性和生态位构建行为的可适应种群。实证分析揭示了诸多有趣的动态现象，包括种群大规模灭绝、军备竞赛和振荡行为。为理解这些行为，我们分析了NC与可适应性之间的相互作用，以及NC对种群基因组多样性和扩散的影响，观察到NC会促进生态位多样化。本研究表明，通过考虑多个多样性生态位来复杂化研究NC的模拟环境，是理解其动态机制的必要条件，并可为未来自然与人工系统的研究提供可验证的假设。