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Human behaviour as a long-term ecological driver of non-human evolution

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, Article number: 0065 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

Due to our intensive subsistence and habitat-modification strategies—including broad-spectrum harvesting and predation, widespread landscape burning, settlement construction, and translocation of other species—humans have major roles as ecological actors who influence fundamental trophic interactions. Here we review how the long-term history of human–environment interaction has shaped the evolutionary biology of diverse non-human, non-domesticated species. Clear examples of anthropogenic effects on non-human morphological evolution have been documented in modern studies of substantial changes to body size or other major traits in terrestrial and aquatic vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants in response to selective human harvesting, urbanized habitats, and human-mediated translocation. Meanwhile, archaeological records of harvested marine invertebrates and terrestrial vertebrates suggest that similar processes extend considerably into prehistory, perhaps to 50,000 yr BP or earlier. These results are consistent with palaeoenvironmental and other records that demonstrate long-term human habitat modification and intensive harvesting practices. Thus, while considerable attention has been focused on recent human impacts on ‘natural’ habitats, integrated evidence from modern biology and archaeology suggests a deep history of human entanglement with our ecosystems including substantial effects on the evolutionary biology of non-human taxa. The number and magnitude of such effects will probably increase given the continued intensification of anthropogenic activities and ecosystem impacts, including climate change and direct genetic modification.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Selected modern examples of morphological change in response to human behaviour.
Figure 3: Evolutionary changes in bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) horn size in response to variable human trophy hunting pressures.
Figure 4: Selected archaeological examples of morphological change in response to human behaviour.
Figure 5: Middle stone age (MSA) to later stone age (LSA) size reductions of Cape turban shell (Turbo sarmaticus) opercula recovered from South African archaeological refuse dumps (shell middens).

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Acknowledgements

We thank G. Pigeon, R. Klein and T. Steele for providing the data from their studies used in Figs 3 and 5; G. Pigeon and E. Loftus for providing images; and M. Aylward, C. Bergey, R. Bliege Bird, B. Codding, E. Davenport, R. Klein, and D. Schussheim for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. This material is based on work supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1554834 to G.H.P.; BCS-1459880 to D.W.B.) and by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE1255832 to A.P.S.). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Alexis P. Sullivan & George H. Perry

  2. Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Douglas W. Bird & George H. Perry

  3. Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    George H. Perry

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A.P.S., D.W.B., and G.H.P wrote the paper. A.P.S. and G.H.P. created the figures.

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Correspondence to George H. Perry.

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Sullivan, A., Bird, D. & Perry, G. Human behaviour as a long-term ecological driver of non-human evolution. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0065 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0065

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