I'll comment as I have time to review each concept. I took a brief look at niche construction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_construction
I don't see anything new here in terms of mechanism. The idea that organisms have an effect on their environment and therefore on all aspects of their own ecology and evoltution is not really new. This is echoed in the protests of many ecologists decades ago that man is NOT destroying nature; man is destroying his place in nature. What is new is the explicit statement that this is a key evolutionary process, even that it is as important as natural selection. I don't see this. Regardless of how an environment was changed, it is still through natural selection that evolutionary pressures are exerted. Even the concept says these changes in environment shift the selective pressures. So to say niche construction is as important (equal to) natural selection, in mind is the same as saying it is the only mechanism leading to natural selection.
I don't dispute any of their process claims. But consider the earthworm example. Is the earthworm population changing its environment? Or is it merely sustaining and maintaining its environment? Or is it merely one component of the maintenance of that environment? One square meter of soil can have up to 300,000 individuals living in the top 12"; bacteria, protozoa, all kinds of microorganisms, tiny insects and other arthropods, fungi, etc. Every one of them has a role in maintaining the condition of the soil. The concept of key-stone species is old, and kind of the same concept as niche construction, from an opposite perspective. If you remove a species from the environment, it will have a change on the environment. A keystone species is one whose removal would have a tremendous effect. Kill all the California Sea Otters, the shellfish population explodes, the kelp forces are destroyed, 100s of species populations are exploding, or crashing, or going through cycles of each.
The concept of niche construction seems to me to be just a different perspective, focus on, and explicit pulling together of mechanisms that have previously been used in interpretations of many examples. In that sense it seems to be a valuable term to use in discussions regarding evolution. Whether it is truly a major process in itself I'll suspend judgment to those working on it.
It would also seem niche construction may not be the best term, as the proponents indicate the organisms effects on the environment are not always for the better.
It also seems that most organisms, evolving in a particular environment that is changing in many ways from many causes, typically evolve toward an optimum, sustainable condition. The idea of the feedback loop in the concept seems to address the process in an explicit manner. However it seems to leave out the idea that this cycle is heading toward a sustainable optimum, even if such is a moving target. It also, I suspect incorrectly, discounts the effect of 100s of species on the same environment. The target for a species isnt moving just because of its own effects.
The target for every species is moving as the environment changes (regardless of cause). That idea may not have an explicit label, but it is an old component of evolutionary interpretations.
