What Niche Construction is (not) Arnaud Pocheville December 2, 2010 Abstract For the past three decades, evolutionary theory has delivered a grow- ing movement “that has sought a re-conceptualization of adaptation by placing emphasis on niche construction” (Laland 2004, 316). Niche con- struction is the process whereby organisms, through their metabolism, activities, choices etc, modify the selection pressures to which their or other’s populations are exposed (Odling-Smee et al. 2003, 419). Thus to the proponents of this movement, “there are in fact two logically distinct routes to the evolving match between organisms and their environments: either the organism changes to suit the environment, or the environment is changed to suit the organism.” (ibid., 18). Taking niche construction into account should lead to a new, extended, evolutionary theory (ibid., 370-385). In this chapter, I investigate the organism-environment symmetry in- troduced by niche construction, in particular as regards adaptation, and how niche construction theory introduces novelty in evolutionary biol- ogy. I argue that niche construction reduces to classical natural selection except in a new, special case: when construction and natural selection processes interact on commensurate time-scales. This case represents a new field for empirical and theoretical investigations. I call this ‘niche in- teraction’. I first give some verbal formalism to lay out the foundations for our question (section 1). Then I present the standard, insofar as there is a standard, natural selection theory (section 2). I then present and discuss niche construction theory (section 3), in particular as regards adaptation and evolutionary explanations (section 4). Finally, I discuss its place within “alternative” evolutionary biologies (section 5), before concluding and summing up the main point (section 6). Pocheville, A. (2010) ‘What Niche Construction is (not)’, in Pocheville, A., La Niche Ecologique: Concepts, Modèles, Applications. (Thèse de Doctorat). Paris: Ecole Nor- male Supérieure Paris, pp. 39–124. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3160.7848. http://hal.upmc. fr/tel-00715471/. Library deposit: December 2, 2010. HAL deposit online: July 7, 2012. Language editing (many thanks to Stefan Gawronski) and new abstract: May 2, 2017. This version (typos): May 25, 2017. Copy-edited version to come.