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How human behavior can impact the evolution of genetically-mediated behavior in wild non-human species

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Abstract

Humans intensely modify the ecosystems we inhabit. Many of the impacts that this behavior can have on other species also sharing these spaces are obvious. A prime example is the devastating current extinction crisis. Yet some populations of non-human, non-domesticated species survive or even appear to thrive in heavily disturbed or human-built habitats. Theoretically, this apparent paradox could be facilitated partly by the evolution of genetically-mediated trait adaptations to the impacts of human behavior. At the least, persistence in strongly modified habitats would provide requisite selection pressures for this process to potentially occur in the future. In fact, we have a growing number of well-characterized examples of morphological trait adaptations to human behavior. However, our knowledge of genetically-mediated behavioral adaptations in similar contexts is less well developed. In this review I set up and discuss several evolutionary scenarios by which human behavior might have impacted the evolution of genetically mediated behavior in non-human, non-domestic species and highlight several approaches that could be used in future studies of this process.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Catharine Rankin for the invitation to participate in the President’s Symposium at the wonderful International Congress of Neuroethology 2018. I enjoyed great discussions with many of the conference attendees, receiving valuable feedback that contributed to this paper. My work on this topic is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1554834). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I am also supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG FOR 2237; Project “Words, bones, genes, tools: Tracking linguistic, cultural, and biological trajectories of the human past”).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    George H. Perry

  2. Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA

    George H. Perry

  3. Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA

    George H. Perry

  4. DFG Center for Advanced Studies, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    George H. Perry

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Perry, G.H. How human behavior can impact the evolution of genetically-mediated behavior in wild non-human species. J Comp Physiol A 206, 337–342 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-020-01415-9

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