Table 3.

Some functional traits of hunter‐gatherer Homo sapiens and their relations to some ecological processes

Trait	Associated process	Type of process	Suggested measure	Indicative specific examples or review papers
Fruit‐eating	Seed dispersal via endozoochory	Facilitation/mutualism	Gape width Incisor length Fruit‐opening technology Tree climbing height	Ungar (1996), Pires et al. (2014), and Kraft, Venkataraman, and Dominy (2014)
Basket technology			Volume of basket relative to fruit, fruit load Home range	Oswalt (1972)
Defecation microhabitat			Overlap with germination microhabitat	Bassotti and Villanacci (2013) and Reinhard, Hevly, and Anderson (1987)
Hairiness	Seed dispersal via ectozoochory (epi‐anthropochory)	Facilitation/mutualism	Height Hair density Hair length	Rantala (2010)
Clothing			Clothing material (adhesiveness) Clothing area Clothing height	Wichmann et al. (2008), Ansong and Pickering (2014)
Bee keeping	Pollination mutualisms	Facilitation/mutualism	Bee population Bee‐pollinated plant populations	Dale and Ashley (2010)
Fire technology	Fire regulation: area affected and intensity	Disturbance/predation	Type of technology Home range (dispersal) Frequency of use	Roebroeks and Villa (2011), Archibald, Staver, and Levin (2012)
Trail formation			Area, frequency, density	Johnson et al. (2018)
Digging in soil and litter			Area, frequency, density
Terra preta or trash heaps	Soil formation	Niche construction/coevolution	Rate of accumulation Volume formed	McMichael et al. (2012) and Schmidt (2013)
Dams, canals, drainage	Hydrological cycling	Niche construction/coevolution	Associated practices and technologies	Williams et al. (2014)
Defecation microhabitat	Nutrient flux	Niche construction/coevolution	Habitat distribution of each	Foster (1999), Andriuzzi and Wall (2018)
Burial microhabitat				Brandt (1988)
Trampling	Bioperturbation	Disturbance/predation	Area, frequency, density	Ejrnæs (2015), Mason et al. (2015), Root‐Bernstein and Svenning (2018)
Trail formation			Area, frequency, density
Digging in soil and litter			Area, frequency, density, digging tool technology
Hunting and gathering	Herbivore (bird, mammal, reptile, fish, mollusk, etc.) population control	Disturbance/predation	Hunting technology, species richness hunted, rate of kill Body size Running speed, endurance, limb length Diet Tooth morphology	Oswalt (1972), Kelly (1995) and Lieberman and Bramble (2007)
Hunting and gathering	Carnivore (bird, mammal, fish, etc.) population control	Disturbance/predation	Hunting technology, species richness hunted, rate of kill Body size Running speed, limb length Diet Tooth morphology	Oswalt (1972) and Kelly (1995)
Hunting and gathering	Arthropod control	Disturbance/predation	Diet	Oswalt (1972) and Kelly (1995)
Scavenging	Disease and parasite lifecycle control	Niche construction/coevolution	Frequency Time to clean carcass Volume consumed Tooth/tool morphology	Lieberman and Bramble (2007) and Pickering and Bunn (2007)
Defecation microhabitat			Distance to food preparation, gathering Distance to water	Bassotti and Villanacci (2013) and Reinhard et al. (1987)
Medicinal ethnobotany			Number of species uses known	Elanchezhian, Kumar, Beena, and Suryanarayana (2007)
Planting	Plant community succession	Facilitation/mutualism	Species richness planted	Michon, De Foresta, Levang, and Verdeaux (2007), Manner (1981) and Zvelebil and Rowley‐Conwy (1984)
Weeding			Species richness weeded
Clearing (swidden)			Frequency, area, density Tool use
Association with “beater” birds or honeyguides	Feeding mutualisms or other mutualisms	Facilitation/mutualism	Frequency	Whelan, Wenny, and Marquis (2008)
Domestication			Frequency Abundance	Larson et al. (2012)

Some “traits” that Homo sapiens make or build are also included (cf. the “extended phenotype” or “constructed niche”). Quantitative measures are suggested wherever possible. “Control” may refer either to increase or decrease. The “indicative specific examples” column contains at least one example of a paper primarily from the ecology literature or a closely related literature, attending to this set of traits and/or the ecological processes it contributes to. There are obviously hundreds if not thousands of ethnographic examples for each category but it was beyond our capacity to cite all of these. For the types of processes, “niche construction/coevolution” refers to interactions linking biotic and abiotic processes, and feeding back to evolution; “facilitation/mutualism” refers to interactions that allow or increase ecological processes, and “disturbance/predation” refers to ecological processes characterized by destruction/conversion of biomass.