Behavioral responses of wild animals to anthropogenic change: insights from domestication

Abstract

With nearly all life on earth experiencing direct or indirect effects of human activity, there is an urgent need to understand how organisms do or do not adapt to human-induced environmental change. Domestication was an early crash into the Anthropocene for some species, and the response of animal populations to domestication selection gives us insights on how plastic responses and evolutionary changes interact to determine the fate of wild vertebrates responding to a human-altered world. We consider intentional breeding, managed hunting, and extermination as part of a continuum of anthropogenic agents of ecological selection and highlight shared targets of selection between domestication and human-induced selection pressures more broadly. Many of the traits that predict successful domestication also predict adaptation of wild animals to human-dominated environments. Domestic animals are also a source for feral lineages and for genetic exchange with wild populations. Shared ecological constraints and gene flow thus contribute to convergent or congruent changes across a spectrum of responses to human influence. Evaluating domestication as another source of anthropogenic selection yields insights for conservation and a promising way to understand mechanisms of behavioral adaptation.

Significance statement

In this review, we draw insights for conservation from domestication—the oldest and most intense evolutionary interaction between animals and humans. Domestication is a special case of organisms successfully responding to an abrupt shift towards human-altered environments, and success in those environments depends on the same factors that make some animals easier to domesticate than others. Domestication has the potential to simultaneously inform us how behavior and genetics contribute to the process of human adaptation in animals and provide a window into the processes required for animals to become human-adjacent. Understanding how animals adapt in our presence yields clues as to how contemporary species react to decreasing habitat and increasing contact with humans.