Is there a way you could put into accessible language the key concepts of EES and niche construction theory?

A niche is a combination of the ecology in which an organism lives and the way it makes a living in that ecology. Niche construction is when organisms shape the world around them making their "niche" better for them and their offspring. Humans are massive niche constructors. Marriage rules, medical practices, growing food, building shelters, tools, clothes, and so on all shape the world around us and effect evolutionary pressures on us.

Most people think "survival of the fittest" is a "thing" and DNA and genes are all that really matters. Both counts are wrong. Evolution is an awesome mix of bodies, ecologies, behaviors, chemistry and history. We know more about how life works, and the range of systems that impact it, than ever before.

I paraphrase Laland and his colleagues to summarize what we know: Organisms are constructed in development, not simply "programmed" to develop by genes...things don't "evolve" to fit into environments, they co-construct and co-evolve with their environments.

You seem equally sympathetic to biological/evolutionary anthropologists who want updated understandings of evolutionary theory to be included as we work to understand the human experience, and to sociocultural anthropologists who find existing popular evolutionary models to be too reductive. Can you give an example of the popular evolutionary approaches you mean, that are in fact too reductive?

One approach [that is too reductive] is to think our DNA, our bodies, and our behavior are primarily shaped by pressures of reproduction and survival (it's all natural selection, or at least the important parts are). Natural selection explains our nature. For example, men are hunters, men are violent, males evolved to be violent because it helped them as hunters. [On this view] there must be a gene (or a few genes) that led to this state.

For example take Monoamine oxidase A (known as MAOA and called the "the warrior gene"). One version of this gene is associated with hyper aggression in males (it is little studied in females). However, expression of this gene is related to childhood stressors and life experience. We see that a slightly larger percentage of men with the "aggressive" version of this gene (compared to those without it), who live through real childhood trauma and social stress are highly violent and have trouble controlling their behavior as adults.

But many of those with the "warrior" version of the gene don't have these problems at all (me, for example). These same kinds of complexities are true for serotonin, testosterone and the other hormones and neurotransmitters associated with aggression. There is no consistent system or pattern in the human body or mind that we can point out as the seat or the main actor in aggressive behavior. Violence is not a single thing and MAOA research demonstrates all sorts of complex and mixed effects (and many of them have nothing to do with violence).