The evolution of niche construction in social species

Niche construction is a behaviour where the local environment is changed by individuals, often to improve reproductive success (e.g. nests or burrows). In social species, the niche construction behaviour of an individual also changes the local environment of others. In such cases, individuals could cheat and not contribute to the social behaviour, but instead make use of the efforts of others. While niche construction is often studied as a process that alters the environment also for future generations, there are also constructed niches that are not inherited (e.g. nests in many birds). Hence, we studied whether niche construction would evolve in social species without inherited environments, or if instead cheating would spread. To this end, we used an individual-based simulation and an adaptive dynamics approach. We found that niche construction can evolve in social species when the population is structured and multiple levels of selection arise, even when individuals disperse randomly. While cheating might result in higher fitness compared to others within the group, individuals from groups without cheaters ended up with even higher relative fitness, which consequently limits the spread of cheaters and allows for the evolution of cooperative behaviours like niche construction.