The evolutionary implication of niche construction and its ecological or behavioral responses

Niche construction refers to the capacity of organisms to construct, modify and select important components of their local environments. By niche construction, organisms not only modify both biotic and abiotic sources of natural selection, but also generate a feedback in evolution. In this paper, the evolutionary implications of niche construction are discussed, so are its ecological and behavioral responses. The results include: (1) As the parallel genetic way of gene inheritance, ecological inheritance extends the profound comprehension for species' adaptation; (2) The time lag between the environmental changes and response of organism to the selection can create the evolutionary inertia and evolutionary momentum; (3) Niche construction shows throe differences from ecosystem engineering; (4) Baldwin effect is compared with natural selection and niche construction, which respectively indicate neutral, passive and positive responses of organisms to environments; (5) The niche construction can explain the evolution of behavior strategy because of its dependence on learning. Through discussing these hot topics and the shortage of theoretical research on niche construction, we propose three potential directions in this field.