Bruce D. Smith on Niches and Domestication

Currently, research on domestication is carried out on two largely disconnected scales—-at the level of individual plant and animal species to document the "what, when, and where" of domestication worldwide, and at a regional or larger scale, to identify causal "macro" variables (such as climate change and population growth) that may account for "why" human societies first domesticated target species. The theory of niche construction provides a link between research at these two different scales of analysis by offering insights into the intervening "how" of domestication--the general human behavioral context within which macroevolutionary factors forged new human-plant/animal relationships of domestication.

Bruce D. Smith. 2007. The Ultimate Ecosystem Engineers. Science 315:1797-1798.