ABSTRACT
Genetic evolution happens at the level of an entire population. It entails a change in the frequency of a given gene or genes in the gene pool—in the entire population’s sum total of genes—from generation to generation. A classic example of how niche construction processes can support genetic evolution entails the adaptive evolution of some resistance to malaria in human populations with increased exposure to the disease as a result of cultural practices fostering mosquitoes, which carry the parasite that causes it. General evolution can happen in a gene pool due to simple random chance, and this type of change is called genetic drift. Culture can give the biological process of genetic mutation a boost: for example, although asbestos is found in nature, the asbestos fiber products that eventually triggered mutation-based cancers in so many factory and other workers in the twentieth century exist as a result of cultural invention.
