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Eastern Gray Squirrel Behavior in Urban Environments
Urbanization can significantly alter environments in ways that impact abundance and behavior of urban animals. Fewer natural predators and greater food availability – as well as increased contact with humans – may lead to altered stress responses, increased boldness, and…
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Monarchs, Milkweed, and Metal: Is Roadside Zinc Pollution Harming Butterflies?
Heavy metal pollution is a widespread threat to urban ecosystems. Although many types of heavy metals are required by organisms at trace levels, the environmental availability of heavy metals is increasing to potentially toxic levels due to human activities such…
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Urbanization Influences Pollinator-Mediated Plant Reproduction
If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that urbanization has an impact on the ecology and evolution of species. However, we know much about how urbanization affects species interactions. For example, plant-pollinator interactions may be particularly sensitive to urbanization…
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Video Recommendation: The City Animal Tier List!
The YouTube channel TierZoo makes a ton of cool videos about animals, specifically viewed through the lens of gaming, where they rank different animal species according to how successful they are at living in different habitats. Past videos have included…
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Ants in France: Urbanization without Isolation
In ecological studies, ants are commonly used as bio-indicators because they are able to respond to rapid changes in their environments. This also makes them a great system to use in urban studies given the rapid changes that urbanization poses…
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Toxic Toads in a Toxic World
The Common European Toad, Bufo bufo, is a pond-breeding amphibian found throughout Europe, including in urban environments. Ecological changes (e.g., predator communities) in anthropogenic habitats present novel challenges to the common toad, but abiotic changes (e.g., pollution) may also influence phenotypes in…
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European Rabbits Have High Gene Flow in German Cities But Not Other EU Cities
Many organisms seem to do poorly in urban areas, and it is unclear which organisms will become extirpated in cities. Typically, organisms that are experiencing population declines are ones that we would think are negatively impacted by urbanization. However, this…
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Cities’ Shrinking Gene Pools
Full paper here: Schmidt, C., Domaratzki, M., Kinnunen, R. P., Bowman, J., & Garroway, C. J. (2020). Continent-wide effects of urbanization on bird and mammal genetic diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1920), 20192497. doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.2497
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