The Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, Institute for Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2023 Mar 13;378(1872):20210401. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0401. Epub 2023 Jan 23.
Distributed adaptations are cases in which adaptation is dependent on the population as a whole: the adaptation is conferred by a structural or compositional aspect of the population; the adaptively relevant information cannot be reduced to information possessed by a single individual. Possible examples of human-distributed adaptations are song lines, traditions, trail systems, game drive lanes and systems of water collection and irrigation. Here we discuss the possible role of distributed adaptations in human cultural macro-evolution. Several kinds of human-distributed adaptations are presented, and their evolutionary implications are highlighted. In particular, we discuss the implications of population size, density and bottlenecks on the distributed adaptations that a population may possess and how they in turn would affect the population's resilience to ecological change. We discuss the implications that distributed adaptations may have for human collective action and the possibility that they played a role in colonization of new areas and niches, in seasonal migration, and in setting constraints for minimal inter-population connectivity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions'.
适应是由种群的结构或组成方面赋予的；适应相关的信息不能简化为单个个体拥有的信息。人类分布式适应的可能例子包括歌曲线、传统、小道系统、狩猎车道以及集水和灌溉系统。在这里，我们讨论了分布式适应在人类文化宏观进化中的可能作用。提出了几种人类分布式适应，并强调了它们的进化意义。特别是，我们讨论了人口规模、密度和瓶颈对种群可能拥有的分布式适应的影响，以及它们反过来如何影响种群对生态变化的恢复力。我们讨论了分布式适应可能对人类集体行动的影响，以及它们在新地区和生态位的殖民、季节性迁徙以及为最小的种群间连通性设置限制方面可能发挥的作用。本文是主题为“从进化过渡看人类社会文化进化”的一部分。
