Self-domestication

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication 

Self-domestication is the process of adaptation of for example wild animals to cohabiting with humans, without direct human selective breeding of the animals. Dogs and cats have undergone this kind of self-domestication. Self-domestication also refers to the evolution of hominids, particularly humans and bonobos, toward collaborative, docile behavior. As described by British biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, self-domestication involves being in an environment that favors reduction in aggression, including interspecific and intraspecific antagonism, for survival. The human self-domestication hypothesis argues that, like mammalian domesticates, humans have gone through a process of selection against aggression – a process that in the case of humans was self-induced, in favor of social behavior from which the group as a whole benefited, such as intelligence, soft skills, emotional intelligence and where individuals with an antisocial personality disorder would be eliminated by the group. For this to happen, sophisticated language was necessary to plot against the bully or individual with excessive aggressive behavior, so one would not be killed themselves. It is hypothesized that this is what differentiated Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis from H. sapiens: the ability of sophisticated language, allowing better social collaboration, elimination of excessive aggressive behavior in the group, leading to self-domestication and could explain why only homo sapiens survived from all the hominae. Spandrels, or evolutionary byproducts, also accompany self-domestication, including depigmentation, arrested development, and reduced sexual dimorphism.

In animals

Wild animals may self-domesticate when less aggressive behavior enhances their survival in the vicinity of human beings. This facilitates their ability to take advantage of increased food availability arising from domestic niches. Alternatively, when occurring in non-human environments, self-domestication may be favored by prosociality, as traits arising from self-domestication lead to stronger social structures. An environment that supports the survival of self-domesticated animals can lead to other apparent changes in behavior and appearance that deviate from their wild phenotypes. These traits include, but are not limited to, depigmentation, floppy ears, curly tails, smaller teeth, smaller cranial anatomy, juvenile behavior, reduced sexual dimorphism, and arrested development. Smaller skulls, increased playfulness, and reduced aggression have also been observed in self-domesticated species.

Red foxes

British cities have populations of red foxes that have established themselves in urban areas, and shows the first signs of self-domestication. Compared to their rural relatives, the urban foxes have adapted to their environment by evolving shorter jaws and smaller brains.

Cats

As grain plants and livestock became domesticated 9,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, hunter-gatherers built urban villages. After a 100,000-year history of nomadism, these hunter-gatherers transitioned to adopting a sedentary lifestyle. Though many societies domesticated barnyard animals for food resources—an example of artificial selection—villagers had little desire or motivation to domesticate wildcats to be house pets. Instead, wildcats, such as the species Felis lybica, began exploiting new resources offered by human environments, such as a proliferation of rodents in grain stores. These cats were tolerated by people, supporting their natural evolution to deviate further from their wild counterparts. This favored the perpetuation of reduced aggressive behavior and increased “tameness,” which made the cats increasingly tolerable in human society.

Dogs

See also: Origin of the domestic dog

Noticing that a dog's skull looks like that of a juvenile wolf, Richard Wrangham suggested that this species could self-domesticate. While some humans may have intentionally domesticated wolves into dogs, this alternate hypothesis states that wolves effectively domesticated themselves by establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with prehistoric humans. They scavenged on the remains of the prey animals left by the prehistoric people at the human settlements or the kill sites. Those wolves that were less anxious and aggressive thrived, continued to follow the prehistoric humans, and colonized the human-dominated environments, generation after generation. Gradually, the first primitive dogs emerged from this group.

Bonobos (Pan paniscus)

The evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare proposed that bonobos (Pan paniscus) have also undergone self-domestication. Despite their close relation to chimpanzees, bonobos exhibit significantly lower levels of aggression. Male chimpanzees use intimidating displays to compete for resources, access to mating, and dominance rank. Both female and male chimpanzees may instigate infanticide. In comparison, bonobos deliver calm displays, the most aggressive action ever being using branches merely as a prop, never to make physical contact with another bonobo. Females are organized in coalitions, minimizing if not eliminating intimidation by males for mating. Males do not form alliances with other male bonobo; instead, male-female bonobo alliances are prolific, with strong bonds between mother and sons. Intergroup tolerance is much higher in bonobos in contrast to chimpanzees. Additionally, bonobo adults are known to engage in play much more frequently than chimpanzee adults, suggesting that bonobos showcase more juvenilized behavior. The cognitive traits that have caused these phenotypic differences to arise are not fully clear; however, cognitive differences between bonobos and chimpanzees have been established in the orbitofrontal cortex, motor cortices, and hippocampus. These neural regions are associated with feeding habits, motor coordination, and emotions.

It remains a point of discussion why the mechanism of natural selection has favored self-domestication in bonobos over time. One theory suggests that self-domestication reinforces stable social structures, favoring prosocial behavior; thus, self-domestication has predominantly been motivated by changing intraspecific dynamics. Bonobo groups are more stable than chimpanzee groups, due to their decreased reliance on scramble competition. Bonobo social groups consist of a significant percentage of each local community, often 16-21% more inclusive of the total population than chimpanzee groups. Since female-female coalitions are so strong, intimidating, coercive approaches for mating and high-ranks are not as fruitful; males find greater reproductive success from kinship ties with mothers.

In addition to these behavioral observations, morphological evidence supports the hypothesis that bonobos, unlike the closely related chimpanzees, have undergone self-domestication. Bonobos, who also exhibit less aggressive demeanors, have a cranial reduction up to 20%, flattening of facial projection, and diminished sexual dimorphism. Bonobos also have smaller teeth. Their white tail-tufts and pink lips, coloration typically observed in juvenile primates, is persistent in phenotypes of adult bonobos; this depigmentation signals extended periods of juvenilized traits.

Marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus)

The neuroscientist Asif A. Ghazanfar revisited the self-domestication hypothesis in marmoset monkeys, a previously undocumented species in application to the theory. The study sought to elucidate how affiliative behavior facilitates the development of domestic phenotypes and determine the social underpinnings behind self-domestication's natural selection. So, the researchers identified both an affiliative behavior and a hallmark morphological trait indicating domestication: in marmoset monkeys, these would be vocal exchanges and a species-distinctive white facial fur patch. Their study found that, when marmoset parents provide more vocal feedback to their offspring, juvenile marmosets correspondingly undergo a larger growth of their white facial fur patch. This white facial patch lacked melanocytes, which originate from neural crest cells, suggesting that there exists a pleiotropic linkage with neural crest cells. This is a significant finding in support of the hypothesis, as neural crest cell abundance is directly related to the adrenal gland size. Lower aggression, as arises from self-domestication, also is accompanied by a smaller adrenal gland, due to a decreased urgency to mitigate stressful conditions. A smaller adrenal gland means that there will be fewer neural crest cells, and thereby melanocytes; the phenotypic result will be a reduction in pigmentation, a common byproduct of self-domestication, as is observed in the marmoset monkeys.

Ghazanfar's study with marmoset monkeys further substantiated the self-domestication hypothesis, which has also emerged in humans. He proposed that the common denominator, and thus a likely driver and selective pressure of domestication, between both marmosets and humans was cooperative breeding. In marmosets, cooperative breeding was a mating system driven by their production of dizygotic twins, whereas in humans, it may be driven due to the extensive amount of parental care that goes into an offspring's early years of development.

In humans

Hominids

Clark & Henneberg argue that during the earliest stages of human evolution a more paedomorphic skull arose through self-domestication. This assertion is based upon a comparison of the skull of Ardipithecus and chimpanzees of various ages. It was found that Ardipithecus clustered with the infant and juvenile species. The consequent lack of a pubertal growth spurt in males of the species and the consequent growth of aggressive canine armoury was taken as evidence that Ardipithecus evolved its paedomorphic skull through self domestication. As the authors state, comparing the species with bonobos:

"Of course A. ramidus differs significantly from bonobos, bonobos having retained a functional canine honing complex. However, the fact that A. ramidus shares with bonobos reduced sexual dimorphism, and a more paedomorphic form relative to chimpanzees, suggests that the developmental and social adaptations evident in bonobos may be of assistance in future reconstructions of early hominin social and sexual psychology. In fact the trend towards increased maternal care, female mate selection and self-domestication may have been stronger and more refined in A. ramidus than what we see in bonobos."

Further research has confirmed that Ardipithecus possessed paedomorphic cranial base angulation, position of the foramen magnum as well as vocal tract dimensions. This was interpreted as not only evidence of a change in social behavior but also a potentially early emergence of hominid vocal capability. If this thesis is correct then not only human social behavior but also language ability originally evolved through paedomorphic skull morphogenesis via the process of self-domestication.

The most comprehensive case for human self-domestication has been proposed for the changes that account for the much later transition from robust humans such as Neanderthals or Denisovans to anatomically modern humans. Occurring between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago, this rapid neotenization has been explained as the result of cultural selection of mating partners on the basis of variables lacking evolutionary benefits, such as perceived attractiveness, facial symmetry, youth, specific body ratios, skin tone or hair, none of which play any role in any other animal species. This unintentional auto-domestication, coinciding with the introduction of imagery of female sexuality, occurred simultaneously in four continents then occupied by hominins. It led to rapid changes typical for domestication, such as in cranial morphology, skeletal architecture, reduction in brain volume, to playful and exploratory behavior, and the establishment of thousands of deleterious conditions, syndromes, disorders and illnesses presumed absent in robust humans.

Of course, these specific views are very clearly based on multi-regionalist perspectives of human evolution which claim modern human populations evolved from relevant archaics present in each world region, as demonstrated in robust skeletal fossils. Such views are largely disproven by genetic evidence supporting the Out of Africa hypothesis with minor inter-breeding and genetic introgression. Despite this, however, human self-domestication entirely within Africa, say, during transition from earlier hominins, especially H. heidelbergensis to H. sapiens remains an open possibility. This would mean archaics in each region (e.g., neanderthals, denisovans) were largely replaced by self-domesticated H. sapiens as they spread around the globe. This possibility suggests self-domestication played a role in the success of H. sapiens, and the extinction of other lineages.

The idea of self-domestication was used by early Social Darwinism which, according to psychiatrist Martin Brüne in an article "On human self-domestication", developed from the idea that humans could "perfect" themselves biologically. The idea of self-domestication is also related to the concept of sociodicy.

Modern humans

Physical anatomy

Based on the dating of the fossil record, archaeologists have concluded that self-domestication likely occurred during the Pleistocene, over 300,000 years ago. Using the fossil record to compare Homo sapiens to pre-sapiens ancestors, archaeologists observed many of the same telling phenotypic characteristics that emerge as a consequence of self-domestication in animals. These features include diminished sexual dimorphism, smaller tooth size, reduction of the cranium, and smaller body size. H. sapiens fossils also demonstrated the flattening of brow-ridge projection and shortening of faces.

	Reduced aggression	Reduced cranium and skull	White patches	Floppy ears	Flattened facial projection	Small teeth	Juvenility	Curly Tails
Cats	Y	Y	Y	N	Y		N	N
Dogs	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Bonobos	Y	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	NA
Marmosets	Y	NA	Y	N	NA	NA	NA	NA
Humans	Y	Y	N	N	Y	Y	Y	NA

Reactive aggression

Richard Wrangham further built upon this body of research, addressing how bonobos and chimpanzees could elucidate development of aggression in humans. Academics have raised concerns with inconsistencies with the self-domestication hypothesis, pointing out that it isn't logical that humans could potentially be domesticated given the profundity of violent acts for which they are responsible. Reconciling this paradox, Wrangham posited that self-domestication is the outcome of two different kinds of aggression: proactive and reactive aggression.

Proactive aggression, which is commonly observed in chimpanzees, is defined as an attack that was planned, motivated by achieving an end goal. Generally, humans demonstrate lower aggression within groups. Reactive aggression, much more closely associated with anger, is characterized as an immediate response to a threat—the human equivalent being "bar fights". Aligned with the behavior of self-domesticated bonobos, humans do not have a high propensity for reactive aggression. This lends further evidence to supporting the self-domestication hypothesis, of which reduced reactive aggression is a central trait.

Population density hypothesis

The population density hypothesis attempts to explain the decreased reactive aggression that is observed in modern humans. During periods of high population density, higher tolerance of associates may be favored due to an increased reliance upon social networks for reliable access to otherwise limited, scarce resources like food. H. sapiens began to exhibit this higher degree of social tolerance approximately 300,000 years ago, which—if this hypothesis upholds—would be associated with a higher population size. However, recent genetic data has currently put this hypothesis to rest, as H. sapiens actually underwent a population decline about 200,000 years ago.

Language-based conspiracy

The language-based conspiracy provides a convincing argument—and is currently the best-supported theory—explaining why reactive aggression was selected against in modern humans, thereby resulting in self-domestication. H. sapiens are theorized to have developed an elegant propensity for language that surpassed its predecessors, including H. neanderthalensis. Enhanced linguistic ability would have allowed for greater suppression and control over a power-hungry member of early hunter-gatherer societies. Those who attempted to achieve dominance over others would be subject to capital punishment, which was facilitated by shared intentionality from others that was easily communicated through language. Language allowed subordinates to collaborate, coordinating plans to dampen the attempt at dominance by the instigator. Over time, this resulted in the selection against reactive aggression.

Theoretical criticism

The self-domestication hypothesis has been met with some degree of criticism. Some researchers have argued that the human brain is peramorphic, instead of paedomorphic. Wrangham puts forth that these arguments do not address the evolution of Homo sapiens from their most recent ancestor, instead focusing too heavily on a direct contrast between apes and humans.

Ecosystem health

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_health

Ecosystem health is a metaphor used to describe the condition of an ecosystem. Ecosystem condition can vary as a result of fire, flooding, drought, extinctions, invasive species, climate change, mining, fishing, farming or logging, chemical spills, and a host of other reasons. There is no universally accepted benchmark for a healthy ecosystem, rather the apparent health status of an ecosystem can vary depending upon which health metrics are employed in judging it and which societal aspirations are driving the assessment. Advocates of the health metaphor argue for its simplicity as a communication tool. "Policy-makers and the public need simple, understandable concepts like health." Some critics  worry that ecosystem health, a "value-laden construct", can be "passed off as science to unsuspecting policy makers and the public." However, this term is often used in portraying the state of ecosystems worldwide and in conservation and management. For example, scientific journals and the UN often use the terms planetary and ecosystem health, such as the recent journal The Lancet Planetary Health.

History of the concept

The health metaphor applied to the environment has been in use at least since the early 1800s and the great American conservationist Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) spoke metaphorically of land health, land sickness, mutilation, and violence when describing land use practices. The term "ecosystem management" has been in use at least since the 1950s. The term "ecosystem health" has become widespread in the ecological literature, as a general metaphor meaning something good, and as an environmental quality goal in field assessments of rivers, lakes, seas, and forests.

Recently however this metaphor has been subject of quantitative formulation using complex systems concepts such as criticality, meaning that a healthy ecosystem is in some sort of balance between adaptability (randomness) and robustness (order) . Nevertheless the universality of criticality is still under examination and is known as the Criticality Hypothesis, which states that systems in a dynamic regime shifting between order and disorder, attain the highest level of computational capabilities and achieve an optimal trade-off between robustness and flexibility. Recent results in cell and evolutionary biology, neuroscience and computer science have great interest in the criticality hypothesis, emphasizing its role as a viable candidate general law in the realm of adaptive complex systems.

Meaning

The term ecosystem health has been employed to embrace some suite of environmental goals deemed desirable. Edward Grumbine's highly cited paper "What is ecosystem management?" surveyed ecosystem management and ecosystem health literature and summarized frequently encountered goal statements:

• Conserving viable populations of native species
• Conserving ecosystem diversity
• Maintaining evolutionary and ecological processes
• Managing over long time frames to maintain evolutionary potential
• Accommodating human use and occupancy within these constraints

Grumbine describes each of these goals as a "value statement" and stresses the role of human values in setting ecosystem management goals.

It is the last goal mentioned in the survey, accommodating humans, that is most contentious. "We have observed that when groups of stakeholders work to define … visions, this leads to debate over whether to emphasize ecosystem health or human well-being … Whether the priority is ecosystems or people greatly influences stakeholders' assessment of desirable ecological and social states." and, for example, "For some, wolves are critical to ecosystem health and an essential part of nature, for others they are a symbol of government overreach threatening their livelihoods and cultural values."

Measuring ecosystem health requires extensive goal-driven environmental sampling. For example, a vision for ecosystem health of Lake Superior was developed by a public forum and a series of objectives were prepared for protection of habitat and maintenance of populations of some 70 indigenous fish species. A suite of 80 lake health indicators was developed for the Great Lakes Basin including monitoring native fish species, exotic species, water levels, phosphorus levels, toxic chemicals, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish tissue contaminants, etc.

Some authors have attempted broad definitions of ecosystem health, such as benchmarking as healthy the historical ecosystem state "prior to the onset of anthropogenic stress." A difficulty is that the historical composition of many human-altered ecosystems is unknown or unknowable. Also, fossil and pollen records indicate that the species that occupy an ecosystem reshuffle through time, so it is difficult to identify one snapshot in time as optimum or "healthy." A commonly cited broad definition states that a healthy ecosystem has three attributes:

1. productivity,
2. resilience, and
3. "organization" (including biodiversity).

While this captures significant ecosystem properties, a generalization is elusive as those properties do not necessarily co-vary in nature. For example, there is not necessarily a clear or consistent relationship between productivity and species richness. Similarly, the relationship between resilience and diversity is complex, and ecosystem stability may depend upon one or a few species rather than overall diversity. And some undesirable ecosystems are highly productive.

"Resilience is not desirable per se. There can be highly resilient states of ecosystems which are very undesirable from some human perspectives , such as algal-dominated coral reefs." Ecological resilience is a "capacity" that varies depending upon which properties of the ecosystem are to be studied and depending upon what kinds of disturbances are considered and how they are to be quantified. Approaches to assessing it "face high uncertainties and still require a considerable amount of empirical and theoretical research."

Other authors have sought a numerical index of ecosystem health that would permit quantitative comparisons among ecosystems and within ecosystems over time. One such system employs ratings of the three properties mentioned above: Health = system vigor x system organization x system resilience. Ecologist Glenn Suter argues that such indices employ "nonsense units," the indices have "no meaning; they cannot be predicted, so they are not applicable to most regulatory problems; they have no diagnostic power; effects of one component are eclipsed by responses of other components, and the reason for a high or low index value is unknown."

Health indicators

Health metrics are determined by stakeholder goals, which drive ecosystem definition. An ecosystem is an abstraction. "Ecosystems cannot be identified or found in nature. Instead, they must be delimited by an observer. This can be done in many different ways for the same chunk of nature, depending on the specific perspectives of interest."

Ecosystem definition determines the acceptable range of variability (reference conditions) and determines measurement variables. The latter are used as indicators of ecosystem structure and function, and can be used as indicators of "health".

An indicator is a variable, such as a chemical or biological property, that when measured, is used to infer trends in another (unmeasured) environmental variable or cluster of unmeasured variables (the indicandum). For example, rising mortality rate of canaries in a coal mine is an indicator of rising carbon monoxide levels. Rising chlorophyll-a levels in a lake may signal eutrophication.

Ecosystem assessments employ two kinds of indicators, descriptive indicators and normative indicators. "Indicators can be used descriptively for a scientific purpose or normatively for a political purpose."

Used descriptively, high chlorophyll-a is an indicator of eutrophication, but it may also be used as an ecosystem health indicator. When used as a normative (health) indicator, it indicates a rank on a health scale, a rank that can vary widely depending on societal preferences as to what is desirable. A high chlorophyll-a level in a natural successional wetland might be viewed as healthy whereas a human-impacted wetland with the same indicator value may be judged unhealthy.

Estimation of ecosystem health has been criticized for intermingling the two types of environmental indicators. A health indicator is a normative indicator, and if conflated with descriptive indicators "implies that normative values can be measured objectively, which is certainly not true. Thus, implicit values are insinuated to the reader, a situation which has to be avoided."

The very act of selecting indicators of any kind is biased by the observer's perspective and separation of goals from descriptions has been advocated as a step toward transparency: "A separation of descriptive and normative indicators is essential from the perspective of the philosophy of science … Goals and values cannot be deduced directly from descriptions … a fact that is emphasized repeatedly in the literature of environmental ethics … Hence, we advise always specifying the definition of indicators and propose clearly distinguishing ecological indicators in science from policy indicators used for decision-making processes."

And integration of multiple, possibly conflicting, normative indicators into a single measure of "ecosystem health" is problematic. Using 56 indicators, "determining environmental status and assessing marine ecosystems health in an integrative way is still one of the grand challenges in marine ecosystems ecology, research and management"

Another issue with indicators is validity. Good indicators must have an independently validated high predictive value, that is high sensitivity (high probability of indicating a significant change in the indicandum) and high specificity (low probability of wrongly indicating a change). The reliability of various health metrics has been questioned and "what combination of measurements should be used to evaluate ecosystems is a matter of current scientific debate." Most attempts to identify ecological indicators have been correlative rather than derived from prospective testing of their predictive value and the selection process for many indicators has been based upon weak evidence or has been lacking in evidence.

In some cases no reliable indicators are known: "We found no examples of invertebrates successfully used in [forest] monitoring programs. Their richness and abundance ensure that they play significant roles in ecosystem function but thwart focus on a few key species." And, "Reviews of species-based monitoring approaches reveal that no single species, nor even a group of species, accurately reflects entire communities. Understanding the response of a single species may not provide reliable predictions about a group of species even when the group is comprised of a few very similar species."

Relationship to human health: the health paradox

A trade-off between human health and the "health" of nature has been termed the "health paradox" and it illuminates how human values drive perceptions of ecosystem health.

Human health has benefited by sacrificing the "health" of wild ecosystems, such as dismantling and damming of wild valleys, destruction of mosquito-bearing wetlands, diversion of water for irrigation, conversion of wilderness to farmland, timber removal, and extirpation of tigers, whales, ferrets, and wolves.

There has been an acrimonious schism among conservationists and resource managers over the question of whether to "ratchet back human domination of the biosphere" or whether to embrace it. These two perspectives have been characterized as utilitarian vs protectionist.

The utilitarian view treats human health and well-being as criteria of ecosystem health. For example, destruction of wetlands to control malaria mosquitoes "resulted in an improvement in ecosystem health." The protectionist view treats humans as an invasive species: "If there was ever a species that qualified as an invasive pest, it is Homo sapiens,"

Proponents of the utilitarian view argue that "healthy ecosystems are characterized by their capability to sustain healthy human populations," and "healthy ecosystems must be economically viable," as it is "unhealthy" ecosystems that are likely to result in increases in contamination, infectious diseases, fires, floods, crop failures and fishery collapse.

Protectionists argue that privileging of human health is a conflict of interest as humans have demolished massive numbers of ecosystems to maintain their welfare, also disease and parasitism are historically normal in pre-industrial nature. Diseases and parasites promote ecosystem functioning, driving biodiversity and productivity, and parasites may constitute a significant fraction of ecosystem biomass.

The very choice of the word "health" applied to ecology has been questioned as lacking in neutrality in a BioScience article on responsible use of scientific language: "Some conservationists fear that these terms could endorse human domination of the planet … and could exacerbate the shifting cognitive baseline whereby humans tend to become accustomed to new and often degraded ecosystems and thus forget the nature of the past."

Criticism of the concept and proposed alternatives

Criticism of ecosystem health largely targets the failure of proponents to explicitly distinguish the normative (policy preference) dimension from the descriptive (scientific information) dimension, and has included the following:

• Ecosystem health is in the eye of the beholder. It is an economic, political or ethical judgement rather than a scientific measure of environmental quality. Health ratings are shaped by the goals and preferences of environmental stakeholders. “There is no scientific basis for demarcating ecosystem health.”  "At the core of debates over the utility of ecosystem health is a struggle over which societal preferences will take precedence."
• Health is a metaphor, not a property of an ecosystem. Health is an abstraction. It implies "good", an optimum condition, but in nature ecosystems are ever-changing transitory assemblages with no identifiable optimum.
• Use of human health and well-being as a criterion of ecosystem health introduces an arrogance and a conflict of interest into environmental assessment, as human population growth has caused much environmental damage.
• Ecosystem health masquerades as an operational goal because environmental managers "may be reluctant to define their goals clearly."
• It is a vague concept. It is “undefinable in a rigorous sense and is, therefore, acceptable only as conveying a vague sense of well-being.”  "Currently there are many, often contradictory, definitions of ecosystem health," that "are open to so much abuse and misuse that they represent a threat to the environment."
• "There are in general no clear definitions of what proponents of the concept mean by 'ecosystem'."
• The public can be deceived by the term ecosystem health which may camouflage the ramifications of a policy goal and be employed to pejoratively rank policy choices. "The most pervasive misuse of ecosystem health and similar normative notions is insertion of personal values under the guise of 'scientific' impartiality."

Alternatives have been proposed for the term ecosystem health, including more neutral language such as ecosystem status, ecosystem prognosis, and ecosystem sustainability. Another alternative to the use of a health metaphor is to "express exactly and clearly the public policy and the management objective", to employ habitat descriptors and real properties of ecosystems. An example of a policy statement is "The maintenance of viable natural populations of wildlife and ecological functions always takes precedence over any human use of wildlife." An example of a goal is "Maintain viable populations of all native species in situ." An example of a management objective is "Maintain self-sustaining populations of lake whitefish within the range of abundance observed during 1990-99."

Kurt Jax presented an ecosystem assessment format that avoids imposing a preconceived notion of normality, that avoids the muddling of normative and descriptive, and that gives serious attention to ecosystem definition. (1) Societal purposes for the ecosystem are negotiated by stakeholders, (2) a functioning ecosystem is defined with emphasis on phenomena relevant to stakeholder goals, (3) benchmark reference conditions and permissible variation of the system are established, (4) measurement variables are chosen for use as indicators, and (5) the time scale and spatial scale of assessment are decided.

Related terms

Ecological health has been used as a medical term in reference to human allergy and multiple chemical sensitivity and as a public health term for programs to modify health risks (diabetes, obesity, smoking, etc.). Human health itself, when viewed in its broadest sense, is viewed as having ecological foundations. It is also an urban planning term in reference to "green" cities (composting, recycling), and has been used loosely with regard to various environmental issues, and as the condition of human-disturbed environmental sites. Ecosystem integrity implies a condition of an ecosystem exposed to a minimum of human influence. Ecohealth is the relationship of human health to the environment, including the effect of climate change, wars, food production, urbanization, and ecosystem structure and function. Ecosystem management and ecosystem-based management refer to the sustainable management of ecosystems and in some cases may employ the terms ecosystem health or ecosystem integrity as a goal. The practice of natural resource management has evolved as societal priorities have changed and, as a consequence, the working definition of ecosystem health, along with the overall management goals, have evolved as well.

The arts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_arts

 

From top to bottom:

• A tambourine player at a traditional debaa dance festival in Mayotte
• Still Life with Profile of Laval by Paul Gauguin, 1886
• The title page of Shakespeare's sonnets in a 1609 edition by Thomas Thorpe
• Las Lajas Shrine, Nariño Department, Colombia
• A Bian Lian performer.

The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both highly dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life, they have developed into innovative, stylized and sometimes intricate forms. This is often achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training and/or theorizing within a particular tradition, across generations and even between civilizations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural and individual identities, while transmitting values, impressions, judgments, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life and experiences across time and space.

Prominent examples of the arts include:

• visual arts (including architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting)
• literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose)
• performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre)

They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects, performances, convey insights and experiences, and construct new environments and spaces.

The arts can refer to common, popular or everyday practices as well as more sophisticated and systematic, or institutionalized ones. They can be discrete and self-contained, or combine and interweave with other art forms, such as the combination of artwork with the written word in comics. They can also develop or contribute to some particular aspect of a more complex art form, as in cinematography. By definition, the arts themselves are open to being continually re-defined. The practice of modern art, for example, is a testament to the shifting boundaries, improvisation and experimentation, reflexive nature, and self-criticism or questioning that art and its conditions of production, reception, and possibility can undergo.

As both a means of developing capacities of attention and sensitivity, and as ends in themselves, the arts can simultaneously be a form of response to the world, and a way that our responses, and what we deem worthwhile goals or pursuits, are transformed. From prehistoric cave paintings, to ancient and contemporary forms of ritual, to modern-day films, art has served to register, embody and preserve our ever shifting relationships to each other and to the world.

Definition

Further information: Art and Classificatory disputes about art

Merriam-Webster defines "the arts" as "painting, sculpture, music, theater, literature, etc., considered as a group of activities done by people with skill and imagination".

While the art refers to the way of doing or the application of human creative skill typically in visual form, the arts are the various practices formed of human creativity and imagination.

History and classifications

Main articles: History of art, History of music, and History of literature

 

The Venus of Brassempouy

In Ancient Greece, all art and craft was referred to by the same word, techne. Thus, there was no distinction among the arts. Ancient Greek art brought the veneration of the animal form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty, and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (e.g. Zeus' thunderbolt). In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical truths.

Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan. Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and instead expresses religious ideas through calligraphy and geometrical designs.

Classifications

Main article: Outline of the arts

 

Lawrence Alma-Tadema's Catullus-at-Lesbia's (1865)

In the Middle Ages, the Artes Liberales (liberal arts) were taught in European universities as part of the Trivium, an introductory curriculum involving grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and of the Quadrivium, a curriculum involving the "mathematical arts" of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The Artes Mechanicae (consisting of vestiaria – tailoring and weaving; agricultura – agriculture; architectura – architecture and masonry; militia and venatoria – warfare, hunting, military education, and the martial arts; mercatura – trade; coquinaria – cooking; and metallaria – blacksmithing and metallurgy) were practised and developed in guild environments. The modern distinction between "artistic" and "non-artistic" skills did not develop until the Renaissance. In modern academia, the arts are usually grouped with or as a subset of the humanities. Some subjects in the humanities are history, linguistics, literature, theology, philosophy, and logic.

The arts have also been classified as seven: painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, performing and cinema. Some view literature, painting, sculpture, and music as the main four arts, of which the others are derivative; drama is literature with acting, dance is music expressed through motion, and song is music with literature and voice. Film is sometimes called the "eighth" and comics the "ninth art".

Visual arts

Main article: Visual art

Further information: Plastic arts and Work of art

Architecture

Main article: Architecture

 

The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. The word architecture comes from the Greek arkhitekton, "master builder, director of works," from αρχι- (arkhi) "chief" + τεκτων (tekton) "builder, carpenter". A wider definition would include the design of the built environment, from the macrolevel of town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture to the microlevel of creating furniture. Architectural design usually must address both feasibility and cost for the builder, as well as function and aesthetics for the user.

Table of architecture, Cyclopaedia, 1728

In modern usage, architecture is the art and discipline of creating, or inferring an implied or apparent plan of, a complex object or system. The term can be used to connote the implied architecture of abstract things such as music or mathematics, the apparent architecture of natural things, such as geological formations or the structure of biological cells, or explicitly planned architectures of human-made things such as software, computers, enterprises, and databases, in addition to buildings. In every usage, an architecture may be seen as a subjective mapping from a human perspective (that of the user in the case of abstract or physical artefacts) to the elements or components of some kind of structure or system, which preserves the relationships among the elements or components. Planned architecture manipulates space, volume, texture, light, shadow, or abstract elements in order to achieve pleasing aesthetics. This distinguishes it from applied science or engineering, which usually concentrate more on the functional and feasibility aspects of the design of constructions or structures.

In the field of building architecture, the skills demanded of an architect range from the more complex, such as for a hospital or a stadium, to the apparently simpler, such as planning residential houses. Many architectural works may be seen also as cultural and political symbols, or works of art. The role of the architect, though changing, has been central to the successful (and sometimes less than successful) design and implementation of pleasingly built environments in which people live.

Ceramics

Main article: Ceramic art

 

Chinese blue and white porcelain jar, Ming dynasty, 15th century

Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials (including clay), which may take forms such as pottery, tile, figurines, sculpture, and tableware. While some ceramic products are considered fine art, some are considered to be decorative, industrial, or applied art objects. Ceramics may also be considered artefacts in archaeology. Ceramic art can be made by one person or by a group of people. In a pottery or ceramic factory, a group of people design, manufacture, and decorate the pottery. Products from a pottery are sometimes referred to as "art pottery." In a one-person pottery studio, ceramists or potters produce studio pottery. In modern ceramic engineering usage, "ceramics" is the art and science of making objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials by the action of heat. It excludes glass and mosaic made from glass tesserae.

Conceptual art

Main article: Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art wherein the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that often defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text. Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, its popular usage, particularly in the United Kingdom, developed as a synonym for all contemporary art that does not practise the traditional skills of painting and sculpture.

Drawing

Main article: Drawing

Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax colour pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools which can simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a drafter, draftswoman, or draughtsman. Drawing can be used to create art used in cultural industries such as illustrations, comics and animation. Comics are often called the "ninth art" (le neuvième art) in Francophone scholarship, adding to the traditional "Seven Arts".

Painting

Main article: Painting

 

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

Painting is a mode of creative expression, and can be done in numerous forms. Drawing, gesture (as in gestural painting), composition, narration (as in narrative art), or abstraction (as in abstract art), among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life or landscape painting), photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic (as in Symbolist art), emotive (as in Expressionism), or political in nature (as in Artivism).

Modern painters have extended the practice considerably to include, for example, collage. Collage is not painting in the strict sense since it includes other materials. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw, wood or strands of hair for their artwork texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer.

Photography

Main article: Fine art photography

Photography as an art form refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer. Art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides a visual account for news events, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services.

Sculpture

Main article: Sculpture

Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials; but since modernism, shifts in sculptural process led to an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded, or cast.

Literary arts

Main articles: Language and Literature

Literature is literally "acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary. The noun "literature" comes from the Latin word littera meaning "an individual written character (letter)." The term has generally come to identify a collection of writings, which in Western culture are mainly prose (both fiction and non-fiction), drama and poetry. In much, if not all of the world, the artistic linguistic expression can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and as folktale. Comics, the combination of drawings or other visual arts with narrating literature, are often called the "ninth art" (le neuvième art) in Francophone scholarship.

Performing arts

Main article: Performing arts

 

Adumu, a traditional Maasai jumping dance

Performing arts comprise dance, music, theatre, opera, mime, and other art forms in which a human performance is the principal product. Performing arts are distinguished by this performance element in contrast with disciplines such as visual and literary arts where the product is an object that does not require a performance to be observed and experienced. Each discipline in the performing arts is temporal in nature, meaning the product is performed over a period of time. Products are broadly categorized as being either repeatable (for example, by script or score) or improvised for each performance. Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, magicians, comedians, dancers, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by the services of other artists or essential workers, such as songwriting and stagecraft. Performers often adapt their appearance with tools such as costume and stage makeup.

Dance

Main article: Dance

Dance generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. In sports, gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines while Martial arts "kata" are often compared to dances.

Music

Main article: Music

 

A musical score of the opening measures from Piano Sonata No. 11 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 

Music is often defined as an art form whose medium is the combination of sounds. Though scholars agree that music generally consists of a few core elements, their exact definitions are debated. Commonly identified aspects include pitch (which governs melody and harmony), duration (including rhythm and tempo), intensity (including dynamics) and timbre. Though considered a cultural universal, definitions of music vary wildly throughout the world as they are based on diverse views of nature, the supernatural, and humanity. Music is often differentiated into composition and performance, while musical improvisation may be regarded as an intermediary tradition. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial.

Theatre

Main article: Theatre

Theatre or theater (from Greek theatron (θέατρον); from theasthai, "behold") is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle—indeed, any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera and mummers' plays.

Multidisciplinary artistic works

Areas exist in which artistic works incorporate multiple artistic fields, such as film, opera and performance art. While opera is often categorized in the performing arts of music, the word itself is Italian for "works", because opera combines several artistic disciplines in a singular artistic experience. In a typical traditional opera, the entire work uses the following: the sets (visual arts), costumes (fashion), acting (dramatic performing arts), the libretto, or the words/story (literature), and singers and an orchestra (music).

Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Waltraute

The composer Richard Wagner recognized the fusion of so many disciplines into a single work of opera, exemplified by his cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ("The Ring of the Nibelung"). He did not use the term opera for his works, but instead Gesamtkunstwerk ("synthesis of the arts"), sometimes referred to as "Music Drama" in English, emphasizing the literary and theatrical components which were as important as the music. Classical ballet is another form which emerged in the 17th century in which orchestral music is combined with dance.

Other works in the late 19th, 20th and 21st centuries have fused other disciplines in unique and creative ways, such as performance art. Performance art is a performance over time which combines any number of instruments, objects, and art within a predefined or less well-defined structure, some of which can be improvised. Performance art may be scripted, unscripted, random or carefully organized; even audience participation may occur. John Cage is regarded by many as a performance artist rather than a composer, although he preferred the latter term. He did not compose for traditional ensembles. Cage's composition Living Room Music composed in 1940 is a "quartet" for unspecified instruments, really non-melodic objects, which can be found in a living room of a typical house, hence the title.

Other arts

There is no clear line between art and culture. Cultural fields like gastronomy are sometimes considered as arts.

Applied arts

Main article: Applied arts

The applied arts are the application of design and decoration to everyday, functional, objects to make them aesthetically pleasing. The applied arts includes fields such as industrial design, illustration, and commercial art. The term "applied art" is used in distinction to the fine arts, where the latter is defined as arts that aims to produce objects which are beautiful or provide intellectual stimulation but have no primary everyday function. In practice, the two often overlap.

Video games

Main articles: Video game and Video games as an art form

Video games, electronic games involving interaction using an input device such as a controller or keyboard, have a history that dates back to when the first video games were created as early as 1950. By the 1960s, arcade video games had emerged—in the following decades, games for both stationary and portable dedicated video game systems, personal computer games, and mobile games were introduced, each with varying market share in the video game industry. Video games are played in either single-player or multiplayer and have many unique genres, the most popular of which are action games and shooter games.

Within the video game community, there is debate surrounding whether video games should be classified as an art form, and whether game developers—AAA or indie—should be classified as artists. Hideo Kojima, a video game designer considered a "gaming arteur", argued that video games are a type of service rather than an art form in 2006. In social sciences, cultural economists show how playing video games is conducive to involvement in more traditional art forms. In 2011, the National Endowment of the Arts included video games in its definition of a "work of art", and the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented an exhibit titled The Art of the Video Game in 2012.