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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Next to the crucial trade route of the Panama canal sits Panama city, where an intriguing example of urban evolution has taken place. As Panama city has grown from a population of around 200,000 in the 1950’s to a population of around 2 million today, massive urbanization has taken place [1]. Urbanization is dramatically reshaping... Continue Reading →
The weather on the northern hemisphere is getting warmer which means beach days are approaching. Every beach dweller can confirm that seagulls (Larus sp.) can be very cunning and cheeky in order to steal food. Is this their ancestral behaviour or has this evolved with the rising of urban areas? Pavlova and Wronski (2020) studied... Continue Reading →
At the heart of the Amazon rainforest, near the confluence of the Rio Negro and Amazone, lies the metropole Manaus. Nicknamed the Paris of the Tropics, Manaus is home to over two million people and functions as the economical hub of the northern part of Brazil. Incidentally, it is also the last refuge of the... Continue Reading →
From hantavirus to the plague, rats have long since been reservoirs for a whole host of nasty infectious diseases. They live in our cities and feed off our garbage, sharing with us their fleas, ticks, and pathogens as a thank-you. With more urban development comes more rats and more potential for zoonotic diseases, making the... Continue Reading →
In response to human impact on the environment—from increased light, sound, air, and water pollution, to higher levels of interaction with humans—organisms must adapt to novel conditions in order to survive. One area in which organisms adapt is behavior. von Merton et. al. (2022) explores how the behavior and personality of two shrew species (Crocidura... Continue Reading →
Guest post by Brandon Waldo, Katherine Moore, Sam Bickley, Christopher Anderson, & Moises Bernal. Salinity, Urbanization, and Genetic Divergence of Killifish Coastlines are unique and dynamic environments that are always subject to intense changes. Organisms living in beaches, estuaries, and marshes constantly face fluctuations in water conditions that can alter their habitat, making hardiness and... Continue Reading →
Is the urban landscape pushing lichen evolution or is it just providing space for opportunists? Harold Timans Photo by: Matthijs MolenaarPhysciella chloantha is shown with a fertile apothecium and the lobes producing vegetative soralia The urban environment creates a multitude of habitats that differ widely in their abiotic factors. In one street it can be... Continue Reading →
The common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) offers a great opportunity to study how humans are influencing the course of evolution. These lizards have a large native range, covering much of Southern Europe, but are also successfully established in many places, including Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. The common wall lizard was introduced to Cincinnati in the early... Continue Reading →
The ongoing global urban expansion presents resident wildlife with many changes to their environmental structure. A few changes created by anthropogenic growth include habitat fragmentation, roads and buildings, pollution, and increased human presence. These consequences of urbanization have caused many species to become locally extinct, while others appear to thrive from the effects of urban... Continue Reading →
Danielle Sabin THE BACKGROUND When Splinter discovered four baby turtles in a New York City sewer, he had no idea what the glowing green goo was that covered their bodies. He simply cleaned them off and gave them a home. Shortly thereafter, these turtles grew very rapidly and mutated into anthropomorphic beings with proclivities for... Continue Reading →
Anolis lizards (known as anoles) are models for studying evolution in the wild. Not only do anoles have a history of repeatedly diversifying to specialize in the same types of microhabitats in the same ways across the Greater Antilles (i.e., they are an adaptive radiation), these lizards also have a tendency to adapt on rapid... Continue Reading →
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