Core questions in domestication research

Abstract

The domestication of plants and animals is a key transition in human history, and its profound and continuing impacts are the focus of a broad range of transdisciplinary research spanning the physical, biological, and social sciences. Three central aspects of domestication that cut across and unify this diverse array of research perspectives are addressed here. Domestication is defined as a distinctive coevolutionary, mutualistic relationship between domesticator and domesticate and distinguished from related but ultimately different processes of resource management and agriculture. The relative utility of genetic, phenotypic, plastic, and contextual markers of evolving domesticatory relationships is discussed. Causal factors are considered, and two leading explanatory frameworks for initial domestication of plants and animals, one grounded in optimal foraging theory and the other in nicheconstruction theory, are compared.T he domestication of plants and animals marks a major evolutionary transition in human history-one with profound and lasting global impacts. The origins of domestication-when and where, how, and why our ancestors targeted plant and animal species for domestication-is an enduring and increasingly active area of scientific inquiry for researchers from many different disciplines. Enhancing present-day productivity of longstanding and recently domesticated species and exploring social and biological issues surrounding their role in feeding rapidly expanding global populations are topics of pressing concern. The volume and breadth of domestication research is underscored by a keyword search on the term "domestication" for the year 2013 which yielded a total of 811 papers in more than 350 different journals (Table S1), including 42 articles published in PNAS (Table S2).Given the large and growing number of studies on domestication across a wide array of disciplines, it is worthwhile to address three central questions. (i) Is there a definition of domestication applicable to both plants and animals from the distant past to present day that distinguishes domestication from related processes of resource management and agriculture? (ii) How does domestication change both the domesticate and domesticator, and how can we track these changes through time? (iii) Why did humans domesticate plants and animals, and are there common causal factors that underlie the process of domestication wherever it takes place?Defining Domestication and Distinguishing Domestication from Management and Agriculture There is a surprising lack of consensus on how to define domestication. Beyond agreeing that it involves a relationship between a domesticator and a domesticate, there is little agreement on what this relationship entails or how and when it results in the creation of a domesticated plant or animal. Domestication is frequently defined from the perspective of the domesticator, emphasizing the role of humans in separating a target domesticate from free-living populations and assuming mastery over all aspects of its lif...

Regional diversity on the timing for the initial appearance of cereal cultivation and domestication in southwest Asia

“…P lant domestication is defined as an evolutionary process that resulted from the systematic cultivation of morphologically wild plants and eventually led to the appearance of agriculture (1,2). In southwest Asia, the archaeobotanical evidence indicates that during the Epipaleolithic (c. 23-11.6 ka Cal BP), the plant-based subsistence focused primarily on the collection of wild plant species, including several species that are the ancestors of modern-day domesticated cereals and legumes (3)(4)(5)(6).…”

“…Morphologically domesticated cereal species first appeared in the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (EPPNB, c. 10.5 ka Cal BP) (11,12). However, agriculture, defined as a system based on the production and consumption of and high reliance on domesticated plants (1), did not developed in southwest Asia until around 9.8 ka Cal BP, during the middle and late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (M/LPPNB) (1,2,13,14).…”

Incipient Domestication Processes in Multicultural Contexts: A Case Study of Urban Parks in San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina)

“…Human beings have been the principal drivers of change in the earth's ecological systems since the Holocene, 10,000 years ago (Smith and Zeder, 2013;Zeder, 2015). Molding of landscapes and domestication of plants and animals are some of the most important humanization processes (Kareiva et al, 2007).…”

“…According to current thinking, these practices are linked to the idea of niche construction (Zeder, 2015), a process through which organisms, by means of their activities and options, modify their own niches in order to transform the pressure of natural selection. This concept is particularly pertinent in the case of humanization processes, where considerable environmental modification is occasioned through cultural practices (Laland and O'Brien, 2011;Smith, 2011).…”

Archaeological sites as Distributed Long-term Observing Networks of the Past (DONOP)

“…The shifting baselines 240 perspective emphasizes the contrasting implications of baseline data for species, landforms, and 241 ecology set before industrial expansion, commercial-scale resource exploitation, the 'great 242 acceleration' and other trends representing significant human impacts on their environments -all 243 in stark contrast to the typical temporally shallow modern data currently in use (Pinnegar and 244 Engelhard, 2008;Steffen et al, 2015aSteffen et al, , 2015b. Finally, the biology perspective seeks to understand 245 and utilize past diversity (i.e., trophic and/or genetic) as recovered through archaeological remains 246 in order to develop tools and datasets that can be used to better manage contemporary wild and 247 domestic animal populations (Hofman et al, 2015;Boivin et al, 2016;Zeder, 2015Zeder, , 2016. 248…”