Evolution in an Urbanizing World
Anole lizards are adapting to urbanization. Anolis cristatellus in particular has rapidly and repeatedly evolved larger toepads with more lamellae (among many other trait shifts) in urban environments across Puerto Rico when compared to nearby forest environments. But one question that has been bugging me and Travis Hagey for years is how exactly are the toepads getting... Continue Reading →
As you may have guessed by now, urbanization changes the natural landscape and this can have consequences for the organisms that live in them. Feral pigeons, which had been domesticated thousands of years ago and transported globally by humans, are not immune to rapid urbanization impacts. Previous studies have shown that there can be inbreeding... Continue Reading →
When people think of the effects of cities on wildlife, changes on land often first come to mind. But, urban areas also have major impacts on aquatic life, especially near sewage treatment plants. These sewage plants dump billions of liters of effluent per day into estuaries and oceans, and this waste can contain a veritable... Continue Reading →
As of 2008, more people live in urban than in rural areas, and human populations in cities will only continue to increase. One goal of urban evolution research is to determine how the expansion of cities impacts genetic diversity of plants and animals. Cities may alter genetic diversity by changing how organisms move across the... Continue Reading →
The percent of impervious surface increases as you move from rural to urban areas, with city centers having the highest percent impervious surface. In a Megapolis like New York CIty, there is a gradient from the core of the city to less urban areas. There is typically less available habitat for plants to grow in... Continue Reading →
Fragmentation of habitat patches is one of many consequences that occurs due to urbanization. This fragmentation can lead to isolated populations that are completely surrounded by urban structures. This isolation can happen on relatively quick timescales, as quickly as 30 years! Due to the loss of habitat patches available for nesting, there can be plant-pollinator... 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 →
Most people – both researchers and residents alike – are quickly coming to appreciate that wildlife are increasingly common in cities, and here to stay. Some species are generally considered a welcomed part of the tapestry of an urban environment (think peregrine falcons). Rats clearly fall on the other extreme of the spectrum, maligned for... 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 →
I’m excited to share an update on my foray into urban ecology and evolution research as an undergraduate! I've been working in the Revell Lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston since my freshman year. I've reported here before about some of my experiences in the field working on urban anoles. Over the past couple of... Continue Reading →
This post is part of our series covering the large number of urban evolution manuscripts that were published in August 2018 in the special issue "The Evolution of City Life" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Urbanization can create new pathways of introduction for invasive species. The recently introduced invasive grass Brachypodium... Continue Reading →
A recent article published in Conservation Genetics by Gizelle Hurtado and Karen Mabry found that even low levels of urbanization can influence genetic structure of Merriam's kangaroo rat. Researchers collected the kangaroo rats from Las Cruces, NM in 5 urban and 5 non-urban sites to compare genetic diversity and genetic structure between the two habitat... Continue Reading →
An outstanding question in urban evolutionary biology is what factors influence a species' success in urban environments. This is a topic we've talked about before (check out Urban Adaptation in Mammals) and several other recent papers have tackled this topic. A variety of factors may influence whether or not a species occupies an urban environment... 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 →
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