Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University, 4034 Smith Laboratory, 174 West 18th Avenue, Columbus 43210-1106, USA.
Curr Anthropol. 2009 Oct;50(5):615-9. doi: 10.1086/605360.
The fields of human behavioral ecology (HBE) and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) both stand to make significant contributions to our understanding of agricultural origins. These two approaches share a concern with phenotypic-plasticity and its evolutionary significance. HBE considers the adaptive plasticity of the human phenotype in response to resource distribution in time and space and has helped to advance understanding of the economic costs and benefits of food production. However, evo-devo and the associated subject of phenotypic (developmental) plasticity have so far been largely neglected as sources of insight into the domestication of plants, despite growing evidence for their evolutionary importance in nature and their roles in the origins of novel traits. We argue that it is important to consider environmentally induced phenotypic variation resulting directly from both natural- and human-induced ecological change as a source of the distinctive morphologies of domesticated plants.
人类行为生态学（HBE）和进化发育生物学（evo-devo）领域都有可能对我们对农业起源的理解做出重大贡献。这两种方法都关注表型可塑性及其进化意义。HBE 考虑了人类表型对时间和空间资源分布的适应性可塑性，并有助于加深对食物生产的经济成本和收益的理解。然而，进化发育生物学及其相关的表型（发育）可塑性主题迄今为止在很大程度上被忽视，尽管有越来越多的证据表明它们在自然界中的进化重要性及其在新性状起源中的作用。我们认为，重要的是要考虑直接由自然和人为引起的生态变化引起的环境诱导的表型变异，作为驯化植物独特形态的来源。
