Evolution in an Urbanizing World
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 →
Virginia opossums (also known as "opossums" or "possums") might be common in suburbs (we've seen them nesting in a BBQ grill), but they're rather rare in city centers. That's why reddit user ShabShoral was surprised to see an opossum hanging out in front of the makeup store Sephora at Union Square in New York City.... Continue Reading →
This tribute also corresponds with another annual ritual -- the migration of birds from their summering grounds north of New York City, to their wintering grounds south of the city
Marine mammals might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the bright lights of the big city, but in the Inwood neighborhood of New York City (located at the very top of Manhattan), there has been an exciting visitor -- a male harbor seal (Phoca vitulina). Thanks to rescue and... 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 →
A few weeks ago I was in San Diego, California for #ComSciCon19 and walking back to the dorms late in the evening when a friend grabbed me just before I stepped on something. I bent down to get a closer look and found this stick insect. After doing a bit of searching and posting 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 →
Raptors are making a comeback in cities around the world, thanks to the discontinuation of DDT. We've highlighted raptors including Red-tailed Hawks and Peregrine Falcons previously in our Urban Observation of the Week. Within cities, pigeon and rat populations provide ample food and researchers in many cities are investigating what resources and landscape variables dictate... 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 →
A few weeks ago one of the students in my department, Stephanie Lieffrig, had this Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) land on her AC unit in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, New York. Hawks, along with Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) are quite common in New York City and AC units are a rather common perch... Continue Reading →
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