Many people don’t think of cities as great places for wildlife, but maybe you have you seen some of these common plants and animals in the city? It comes as a surprise to a lot of people that many organisms thrive in cities. The organisms above are just some of the many examples that have been part of this recent explosion of research on evolution in urban areas worldwide.
For decades, research has focused on ecology in urban environments. Biologists have information on whether these organisms have increased or decreased abundances, changes in behavior, and even changes in physiology. However, we know relatively little about how these species are changing in the face of rapid urbanization. The burgeoning field of urban evolution is starting to change that as researchers are asking how animals persist in cities and what role adaptive evolution plays.
Recently, the Proceedings of the Royal Society B hosted a Special Feature entitled ‘The evolution of city life‘, guest edited by James S. Santangelo, L. Ruth Rivkin and Marc T. J. Johnson from the University of Toronto. James, Ruth, and Marc assembled an impressive team of scientists from around the world to contribute their work on a broad range of evolutionary questions in urban ecosystems. The 15 articles in this special feature represent the leading edge of urban evolutionary biology and address many gaps in our knowledge, laying out an exciting roadmap for the future of urban evolution studies!
You can read all of the articles in this special issue for free. We will also be covering each of the papers in the special issue here on the blog over the next few weeks, so check back to get the summary version of each.
Table of Contents:
- Modern spandrels: the roles of genetic drift, gene flow and natural selection in the evolution of parallel clines
James S. Santangelo, Marc T. J. Johnson, Rob W. Ness
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0230 - Phenotypic selection on floral traits in an urban landscape
Rebecca E. Irwin, Paige S. Warren, Lynn S. Adler
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1239 - Urban versus forest ecotypes are not explained by divergent reproductive selection
Aude E. Caizergues, Arnaud Grégoire, Anne Charmantier
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0261 - Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia)
Amanda J. Gorton, David A. Moeller, Peter Tiffin
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0968 - Evolution of thermal tolerance and its fitness consequences: parallel and non-parallel responses to urban heat islands across three cities
Sarah E. Diamond, Lacy D. Chick, Abe Perez, Stephanie A. Strickler, Ryan A. Martin
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0036 - Urbanization drives genetic differentiation in physiology and structures the evolution of pace-of-life syndromes in the water flea Daphnia magna
Kristien I. Brans, Robby Stoks, Luc De Meester
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0169 - Linking locomotor performance to morphological shifts in urban lizards
Kristin M. Winchell, Inbar Maayan, Jason R. Fredette, Liam J. Revell
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0229 - Contrasting the effects of natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow on urban evolution in white clover (Trifolium repens)
Marc T. J. Johnson, Cindy M. Prashad, Mélanie Lavoignat, Hargurdeep S. Saini
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1019 - Admixture of hybrid swarms of native and introduced lizards in cities is determined by the cityscape structure and invasion history
Joscha Beninde, Stephan Feldmeier, Michael Veith, Axel Hochkirch
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0143 - Evolution of genomic variation in the burrowing owl in response to recent colonization of urban areas
Jakob C. Mueller, Heiner Kuhl, Stefan Boerno, Jose L. Tella, Martina Carrete, Bart Kempenaers
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0206 - Urban hubs of connectivity: contrasting patterns of gene flow within and among cities in the western black widow spider
Lindsay S. Miles, Rodney J. Dyer, Brian C. Verrelli
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1224 - Urban rat races: spatial population genomics of brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) compared across multiple cities
Matthew Combs, Kaylee A. Byers, Bruno M. Ghersi, Michael J. Blum, Adalgisa Caccone, Federico Costa, Chelsea G. Himsworth, Jonathan L. Richardson, Jason Munshi-South
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0245 - Evidence for human-mediated range expansion and gene flow in an invasive grass
Tina M. Arredondo, Gina L. Marchini, Mitchell B. Cruzan
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1125 - Genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism scan suggests adaptation to urbanization in an important pollinator, the red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius L.)
Panagiotis Theodorou, Rita Radzevičiūtė, Belinda Kahnt, Antonella Soro, Ivo Grosse, Robert J. Paxton
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2806 - Signatures of human-commensalism in the house sparrow genome
Mark Ravinet, Tore Oldeide Elgvin, Cassandra Trier, Mansour Aliabadian, Andrey Gavrilov, Glenn-Peter Sætre
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1246
I am interested in urban ecology and evolution. Urbanization can have drastic impacts on local ecosystems, both negative and positive, and creates a new environment for organisms to experience. To understand the impacts that urbanization plays on organisms, I look through the lense of population genetics and molecular evolution.
- Urban Observation of the Week: Golden Jackal - July 28, 2021
- Urban Observation of the Week: Bellflowers in Munich - July 21, 2021
- Urban Observation of the Week: So Many Plants - July 14, 2021
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