Evolution in an Urbanizing World
With the rise of modern medicine came the rise of pharmaceutical waste. Not only expired or discontinued drugs and hospital waste fall under this category, but also sources such as the components of ingested drugs that are not being metabolized by the patient, therefore reaches their faeces, which are disposed of in the bathroom and... Continue Reading →
Continent-wide parallel urban evolution of increased heat tolerance in a common moth Thomas Merckx, Matthew E. Nielsen, Tuomas Kankaanpää, Tomáš Kadlec, Mahtab Yazdanian, Sami M. Kivelä Abstract Urbanization and its urban-heat-island effect (UHI) have expanding footprints worldwide. The UHI means that urban habitats experience a higher mean and more frequent extreme high temperatures than rural... Continue Reading →
How does urbanization affect natural selection? Anne Charmantier, Tracy Burkhard, Laura Gervais, Charles Perrier, Albrecht I. Schulte-Hostedde & Megan J. Thompson Abstract Urbanisation is one of the most significant contributors to the Anthropocene, and urban evolutionary ecology has become an important field of research. While it is commonly assumed that cities impose new and/or stronger... Continue Reading →
In today’s urban environment, the constant presence of traffic noise is undeniable, infiltrating even the most hidden corners of the woods. Previous studies have shown that this anthropogenic noise negatively affects the welfare of both humans and other species. The fact that even unborn organisms experience negative effects is a worrying development, emphasizing the urgent... Continue Reading →
Urban Life Affects Differentiation and Phenotypic Variation but not Asymmetry in a Fully Terrestrial Salamander Lucía Alarcón-Ríos, Antigoni Kaliontzopoulou, David Álvarez & Guillermo Velo-Antón Abstract The environmental transformations associated with cities are expected to affect organisms at the demographic, phenotypic, and evolutionary level, often negatively. The prompt detection of stressed populations before their viability is compromised is essential to... Continue Reading →
A number of years ago there was quite a lot of media attention regarding a possible case of in situ evolution of Culex pipiens form molestus in the London Underground metro system. This media buzz created speculation that this was a unique species that had risen during the over 160 year long existence of the... Continue Reading →
Have you ever seen a duck, goose, coot or any other waterbird laying long out on the ground or surface of the water? Do these birds look tired to you? If so, they might be suffering from botulism.Avian botulism, also known as Limberneck, is the most significant disease for migratory birds around the globe. Outbreaks... Continue Reading →
Darkness sets over India’s largest city. Of course, a city with a population exceeding 12 million people will never be truly dark. Or silent. Still, in those neighborhoods bordering Sanjay Gandhi National Park the vibrant city center feels far away. In this park the wild part of India is still visible as the densely vegetated... Continue Reading →
Urbanization is happening all over the world. Everywhere you look, you can see that cities are expanding and new cities are being built. This is often at the expense of nature. There is not a lot of room for vegetation in cities and more and more existing vegetation and farmlands are being turned into urban... Continue Reading →
“Madrid declares war on plague of raccoon and parrot invaders” The Guardian (2013, July 22) “Toronto wages war on Raccoon Nation”The Canadian Press (2015, May 3) Many places have declared the war on raccoons in recent years. But is this war only making them stronger? Why declare war on racoons? The raccoon (Procyon lotor) originates... Continue Reading →
It is a common belief that human-modified areas, such as farmlands, support fewer bird species than natural habitats such as forests. However, new research by Zhao et al. (2024) challenges this idea. Their study of bird species diversity on islands off the coast of China has unexpected results that suggest that farmlands might play a... Continue Reading →
Many of the posts on this blog discuss the wide variety of life you can find in urban environments. But have you ever considered the diversity you can find in the very stones of the buildings we live in? Depending on where these stones were mined, you might be able to find some neat fossils.... Continue Reading →
With the rapid expansion of the city, the degradation of the natural environment has gradually aroused widespread concern in society. In recent years, the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea), one of the most iconic plants in the Sonoran Desert, has attracted the attention of ecologists because of its declining population and wildfires. They began to think... Continue Reading →
During the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) 2024 conference, I interviewed Andrea Beverly and Jamie Lau, from Radford University, who are studying how the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is impacting freshwater streams in Rural Virginia. We discuss their collaboration with local groups, the intersection between politics and science, and the... Continue Reading →
A statue of a fox, as long as 16 meters with a height of over 10 meters, with a bag between its teeth sits in the middle of the Dutch city Rotterdam (Smets, 2024). It is locally known as the Bospoldervos, created by Hofman in 2020. Not without reason, because precisely in this part of... Continue Reading →
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