Evolution in an Urbanizing World
If you've walked around a city with pigeons, you might have noticed that many of them are missing toes or have deformed feet. These foot deformities are common and may arise due to a number of different ailments including: chemicals that make surfaces sticky or apply an unpleasant odor; physical deterrents that are placed on... Continue Reading →
Many urban wildlife biologists face unique challenges when trying to capture their study organisms. Traditional methods that are used in remote areas are often not available to urban wildlife biologists, either because the method requires traps that the public tampers with (though this problem does happen to non-urban biologists as well), because urban animals are... Continue Reading →
Along with the altered landscape, urban organisms also encounter novel (anthropogenic) food resources. And while anthropogenic food can be abundant in cities, it is often lower in quality than natural food. This can lead to a situation in which low-quality but abundant food attracts animals to urban areas, but due to its reduced quality, this... Continue Reading →
Life in the City turns 1 year old today! Thank you all for following our blog. We are very proud of how it has grown and owe a huge thank you to our amazing contributors. In the last 365 days we have published 147 posts! The blog has received a total of 48K hits from 16K... Continue Reading →
City life can be difficult for many organisms. Cities are louder, brighter, hotter, and often more contaminated with toxins than nearby less-developed areas. Ever-increasing research is showing that organisms are coping with the urban environment in many ways. Urban great tits (Parus major) living in areas with high amounts of noise pollution sing at a... Continue Reading →
Many of us don't think of the Galápagos as a place that is urbanized, but as we've discussed here on Life in the City previously, there is substantial human impact in the archipelago. An estimate from 2012 places the population size at 35,000 people -- about 10 times the population just 4 decades earlier. Because researchers... Continue Reading →
Populations are often challenged to live in novel or rapidly changing environments. This is probably most clear in cities where new habitat is being created causing native species to encounter novel habitat features. But because of this, cities set the stage to help researchers understand the plastic and evolutionary shifts that occur in wild organisms.... Continue Reading →
Suboptimal movement across the urban landscape can lead to injury or death and, thus, has a high fitness cost. Many cities have developed wildlife corridors that allow animals to move through the urban matrix while reducing their chances of being struck by a vehicle. But what if impervious surfaces, such as bike paths, can act... Continue Reading →
If you live in a city you may not realize that urban populations of bats are all around you. But Liza Lehrer and Shannon Pederson, who work on urban bats, know that bats are common in cities, even if you don't always see them. Lehrer started off by describing how bats are under threat due... Continue Reading →
The International Urban Wildlife Conference kicked off Monday morning in Portland, OR with a Plenary Session titled "Collaboration and Conservation: Applications to Urban Wildlife" featuring talks by Dr. Chris Schell, Deeohn Ferris, and Bob Sallaniger followed by a panel discussion. Dr. Schell, Assistant Professor of Urban Ecology at the University of Washington, Tacoma and Life... Continue Reading →
The 2019 International Urban Wildlife Conference will take place in Portland, Oregon from June 2nd-5th. This meeting is a great chance to connect with other scientists studying urban evolution and hear about the wide range of research that is being conducted in urban environments. Talk submission has already closed, but registration is open until May... Continue Reading →
What is urbanization and how do we, as urban evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and conservation biologists, define this metric? We've written about this topic before and a new paper by Remington Moll et al. titled "What does urbanization actually mean? A framework for urban metrics in wildlife research" takes a deep dive into defining urbanization. Generally,... Continue Reading →
As someone studying animals in cities, I often feel need to justify why it is essential that we understand how organisms utilize and evolve within urban habitat. People may think that I study urban environments because I’m lazy or can’t handle real fieldwork, but the truth is that we know very little about how animal... Continue Reading →
From the Natural History Museum in London to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, pretty much every major city has a science museum that houses collections of animals, plants, and fossils from around the world. The tragedy of the fire that devastated the... Continue Reading →
One way that animals may adapt to urban environments is by expanding their diet to include anthropogenic food, as discussed in the earlier post “Is Anthropogenic Food Waste Driving the Evolution of Urban Animals?”. But how can we tell if urban animals are actually consuming enough anthropogenic food to change physiology and drive evolution? We... Continue Reading →
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