Our Niche: Describing the Human Place in Nature
Through considering the human niche, we can approach key questions of culture and spirituality within the philosophy and science of Nature. This is the first of a series of articles on this topic.
Jewish ecology — an incipient field of ecological Science — consists of an integrative form of life science; a science in which culture and nature, ethics and ecology can be holistically integrated. This sort of ecology is necessary to reveal precisely how the relationships between organisms and their environments provide the foundation upon which the natural history of mind, technology, culture and spirit unfolds. Thus far, the Jewish Ecology blog has sought to demonstrate the various ways our tools, relationships, and goals emerge within our living place in the World. In this article, I will seek to articulate the concept of the niche: the key ecological framework underlying this integrative approach to human ecology.
In laying out the ecological principles at the heart of this project, I will set the scene such that, over the coming months, I can present a multifaceted, holistic, and innovative framework for thinking about the human place — our niche — as it grounds our evolving history (including our development, differentiation, and diversification) in the living World.
To recap the journey of Jewish Ecology (the blog) thus far: Humankind is a richly communal species – human life has always been in association with community. Through love and attunement, communication and collaboration, story-telling and science, we have come to know and to construct the world we see today. In our shared struggle to survive and flourish across the diverse ecologies of our planet, people have built all sorts of tools. Collectively, our technology has time and time again enabled new ways of understanding and responding to the challenges of daily life. Spirituality — including and transcending the tools, practices, and relationships that support the vital enactment of interbeing — extends from the vital body life to cerebral mind, affirms our interdependence with the World. To participate in spiritual ecology is to work to understand and live one’s life, recognizing the fundamental interrelatedness that roots us in our collective home. Jewish ecology contains both the lived practices, and accumulated body of knowledge, that arises from this spiritual work as it is understood within the context of the unfolding relationship between the textual tradition and living communities that collectively make up Judaism.
The intention of starting Jewish Ecology in this manner was to show (rather than just tell) what Jewish ecology might look like as an integrative scientific and spiritual practice. Yet, until now, the ecology underlying this blog has been largely subterranean: lurking beneath the surface, emerging in jargon and metaphor; never clearly expressed in the technical frameworks of ecological science. This article will begin to bridge this gap. By exploring the central role of the niche in the science of life, I will demonstrate how this scientific concept helps us untangle the developing and evolving relationship between organisms and their environments.
Further, by showing how the niche evolves (in dynamic relationship with the evolution and development of species and organisms) I will present the concept of niche construction – an increasingly important theory in biology used to explain how organisms actively participate in defining, building, and maintaining their homes. Through these technical concepts, I aim to show that ecological theory can be applied in an integrative fashion, allowing us to explore how human cognition, technology, and relationships mediate our participation in the active construction of our World.
The Niche
While generations of ecologists have sought to define the organism’s “role” or “purpose” in the environment — the relationship we now call the niche — its origins lie before the modern science of ecology. One early description of the niche lies within the work of Carl Linnaeus, creator of the modern taxonomic system. Linnaeus imagined that each species’ home on the biological tree of life (or the Systema Naturæ, System of Nature, as he called it) was divinely ordained, designed by an otherworldly creator. He described this system as “the polity of Nature”, with the organism’s niche being their “office.” Charles Darwin too recognized the importance of the organism’s “office” in Nature. In his description of the process of evolution, he described the niche as an organism’s “place” in the struggle for existence. Since then, numerous definitions and descriptions of the niche have been proposed, but regardless of their minutiae, each recognizes it as composed of all the environmental requirements necessary for organism’s life.
The niche concept remains central to how scientists describe the relationship between an organism and its home. The word niche comes from the French word nicher, meaning to nest. The niche of a species is generally understood as the collection of relationships, resources, and environmental needs through which an organism’s development and reproduction is possible. The niche of a bird, for instance, extends far beyond the limits of its nest – it includes every food source and every watering hole, the source of every twig woven into its nest, as well as the climate within which the organism is able to thrive.
One popular definition of the niche, coined by G. Evelyn Hutchinson, is “an N-dimensional hypervolume” – which in less formal language, is an imaginary structure within which all the various foods, climatic tolerances, material resources needed for life are found. As a model, the niche is usually sketched out to describe the place of a species in the world, including all the potential and actual environments where the species could persist. Already here, I have highlighted a key distinction in the niche concept. When considering all the potential places a species could live, we describe the species’ fundamental niche. But in reality, organisms don’t occupy every habitat where they could survive. The process of developing into a healthy organism, of finding a suitable environment, of coming to know a particular area, and of becoming familiar with a particular neighborhood – this is what separates the fundamental niche from the actual home, the realized niche.
These figures show how the fundamental niche compares to the realized niche. On the left, two of N dimensions of the niche are shown, with the fundamental and realized niches of individuals within a population mapped out. On the right, the figure shows how development occurs alongside the realization of one of many potential environments an organism could come to inhabit. These figures were taken from Takola and Schielzeth’s 2016 article, “Hutchinson’s Ecological Niche for Individuals”.
If the fundamental niche contains all the potential places a species or individual could survive, the realized niche arises precisely as an organism develops in the world. Thus, the environment as a whole can be seen as the product of generations upon generations of different organisms interacting in place to build an ecosystem. This dynamic process, collectively leading to the World we see today, leads us to the foundational ecological process at the heart of Jewish Ecology: niche construction.
Niche Construction
The line between the fundamental niche and the realized niche is ever evolving – shifting as organisms develop; actualizing the potentials afforded by their genetic and environmental inheritance, realizing their home in an ever unfolding dialogue with the World. As species adapt to new conditions, find new food sources, or learn new behaviors, the fundamental niche expands and contracts – shifting as the capabilities of a species changes with adaptive evolution.
This is not a passive process. As organisms live in their environments, they shape their home – often in a way such that their home is safer, more comfortable, and a better place for themselves and their offspring to thrive. This is the process of niche construction.
Niche construction can be perhaps best understood through example. Beavers construct their niche as they build their dams, slowing a creek and transforming it into a pond, allowing their favorite foods — namely, willow trees — to grow abundantly around their home. Likewise, redwood trees construct their niche by building moist, closed forest, building up rich soils and creating an ideal habitat for their offspring to thrive. In both of these examples, niche construction is occurring regardless of whether the organism is aware of how they are constructing their niche. Because they (and their offspring) continue to live in the modified environment, niche-constructing organisms collectively work to alter and maintain their environment, building up a habitat they can reliably (and comfortably) call home.
Human beings take niche construction to another level (or perhaps several). We grow up enmeshed in a rich cultural matrix, built of stories, technologies and living relationships, constructed and inherited from generation to generation. We inherit tools, ways of knowing, and homelands richly intertwined with the unfolding of natural and human history. And although we inherit so much, we remain uniquely able to construct new tools, to assemble new ways of understanding, to build relationships and communities along new and radically innovative lines.
While ecologists often abstract the niche to explain the needs of an entire species, I believe that the niche (alongside the process of niche construction) is a potent tool through which we can also understand differences in the habitats and lifeways among individuals within populations (see the figures above). The key to individualizing the niche (and the active process of niche construction) lies within the living relationships between people, knowledge and tools, and the communities and ecosystem they inhabit. Through the tools we inherit and create, we develop our understanding of the world. The rich diversity of human traditions and technologies found across the distinct yet interwoven ecosystems in which we live reveals the foundational importance of niche construction in human/natural history.
Over the next month, I will work to present a holistic model of the human niche. This model aims to root our understanding of humankind within the vast interconnectedness of social and ecological systems – and in doing so, show the profound unity in diversity found across human-Nature relations. Through this article, and many more to come, I hope to help you understand the vital Oneness of humankind – a Oneness which does not flatten the particularity of each individual, but shows how that uniqueness arises from the varied contexts in which we come into being. Through the human niche, we can grapple with both the universals and the particularities found within the living World. Through Jewish ecology, I aspire to show how contemporary science can provide space for the Living holiness of Nature, the profound divinity of G-d, and the sense of Sacredness we can find in the World.
I would like to conclude this article with a poetic translation of the Shema – the prayer at the center of my conception of Jewishness. Through the act of translation, both of ecological theories and of Jewish prayers, I hope to allow you to approach and participate in the living project that is Jewish Ecology.
Shema
A Prayer for Oneness
Listen,
Those of you who are struggling with G-d;
G-d is Oneness, Oneness is G-d.
May the beautiful Name and the World of Nature be blessed
Now and forever
Thank you for reading Jewish Ecology. This blog aims to build a participatory dialogue in which important ideas at the intersection of Judaism and ecology can help us root ourselves in the World. This blog is not just for Jews; I aim for these articles to be accessible and impactful for anyone that is interested in building up an understanding of the role that spirituality, philosophy, and/or ethics play in bringing about a more peaceful, ecological, and sustainable future for all People and the World.
Sources:
Photo at the top of the post comes from a diorama at the Motal Folk Arts Museum (Author: Vershitskaya, Tamara)
Figures come from Takola and Schielzeth, 2016. Hutchinson’s Ecological Niche for Individuals. Biology and Philosophy.