Special Thematic Issue on ‘Indian Cultural Concepts’

Special Issue on Indian Ocean Climate*

In the past, great advances in Indian Ocean research have emerged after expeditions by research vessels such as the Discovery in the 1930s or international cooperative observational programs such as the International Indian Ocean Expedition (1960–65) and ship surveys during the World Ocean Circulation Experiment in the mid-1990s. However, Saji et al. (1999) and Webster et al. (1999), in two let...

Thematic Issue on Biomaterials

Special Issue

THEMATIC ISSUE ARTICLE: CULTURAL NICHE CONSTRUCTION A Cultural Niche Construction Theory of Initial Domestication

I present a general theory for the initial domestication of plants and animals that is based on niche construction theory and incorporates several behavioral ecological concepts, including central-place provisioning, resource catchment, resource ownership and defensibility, and traditional ecological knowledge. This theory provides an alternative to, and replacement for, current explanations, i...

THEMATIC ISSUE ARTICLE: CULTURAL NICHE CONSTRUCTION Cultural Niche Construction: An Introduction

Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other’s niches. By transforming naturalselection pressures, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various different levels. Niche-constructing species play important ecological roles by creating habitats and resources used by other species and thereby affecting th...