We’ve done our best to stay on top of new literature in the field, but we’re only human! If we missed something, let us know, or if you are a contributor, feel free to add abstracts of new literature that we missed – just make sure you tag the category “New Lit Abstracts”.
Sorry we fell behind! We will try to do better. You can help! Email Kristin to get involved in Life in the City!
2026
- Behavioral Convergence in Urban Wildlife (3/20/2026)
- Cities as Evolutionary Incubators: Unlocking the Secret of the Spotted Lanternfly Invasion (2/20/2026)
- Urbanized Invaders (2/13/2026)
2025
- New Lit Alert: Interpopulation morphological differences and sexual dimorphism of Dekay’s brownsnake (Storeria dekayi) along a rural–urban gradient (7/2/2025)
- The Urban Spider Survival Guide (6/30/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Sex-specific morphological shifts across space and time in replicate urban wall lizard introductions (6/25/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Parallel phenotypes of Littoraria angulifera emerge across ecoregions, as a response to urbanization (6/18/2025)
- Urbanization’s Hidden Pleiotropic Effect on Pigeon Plumage Color and Blood Cholesterol (6/16/2025)
- The Evolution of Creek Chubs: How Urbanization is Shaping Freshwater Species (6/12/2025)
- Spotlight on foraging behaviour of nocturnal rodents (6/9/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Were bed bugs the first urban pest insect? Genome-wide patterns of bed bug demography mirror global human expansion (6/6/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Different traits shape winners and losers in urban bird assemblages across seasons (5/30/2025)
- Swimming through concrete: how the platypus adapts to city life (5/28/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Reduced thermoregulatory ability contributes to increased mortality in urban box turtles (Terrapene spp.) (5/23/2025)
- Artificial light at night may make African mouse species vulnerable (5/18/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Colourful Urban Birds: Bird Species Successful in Urban Environments Have More Elaborate Colours and Less Brown (5/2/2025)
- New Lit Alert! Melanic urban hedgehogs! (4/25/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Parallel Signatures of Diet Adaptation in the Invasive Common Myna Genome (2/6/2025)
- SICB 2025: The Impact of Urban Heat Islands and Wetlands on Avian Diversity (2/3/2025)
- New Lit Alert: Effects of urbanisation, habitat characteristics, and management on garden pond biodiversity: Findings from a large-scale citizen science survey (1/30/2025)
2024
- New Lit Alert: City lights, moonlit nights: examining bat responses to urbanization and lunar cycles (12/9/2024)
- New Lit Alert: Body size and survival of urban and rural populations of a common wolf spider are not influenced by lifelong exposure to lead pollution (12/4/2024)
- New Lit Alert: Signatures of local adaptation and maladaptation to future climate in wild Zizania latifolia (10/29/2024)
- New Lit Alert: Big cities, big bodies: urbanisation correlates with large body sizes and enhanced body condition in African dwarf chameleons (Genus: Bradypodion) (10/22/2024)
- Algae might be the cure to pharmaceutical waste (10/10/2024)
- New Lit Alert: Continent-wide parallel urban evolution of increased heat tolerance in a common moth (10/8/2024)
- New Lit Alert: How does urbanization affect natural selection? (10/1/2024)
- New Lit Alert: Urban Life Affects Differentiation and Phenotypic Variation but not Asymmetry in a Fully Terrestrial Salamander (9/24/2024)
- Focus points for urban biodiversity conservation planning and design for birds, reptiles and amphibians (7/22/2024)
- Is agriculture actually beneficial for avian biodiversity? (7/16/2024)
- Science Meets Activism: Stream ecology in the wake of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (7/8/2024)
- Froggystyle: Urbanization and the Evolution of Sexual Signaling in the túngara frog (6/18/2024)
- How Gull-ible can we be around urban Larus? (5/17/2024)
- If they can’t hear you, make them smell you… (4/26/2024)
2023
- Rats around the rosie: a dance of urbanization and disease (10/6/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Urban environment determines population genetics in the green toad, Bufotes viridis (9/11/2023)
- Behavioral Differences Among Individuals of Rural and Urban Shrews (9/6/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Metabolic adjustment in urban birds: glycometabolic enzyme activities in urban and rural tree sparrows (passer montanus) (8/3/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Variation in Pheidole nodus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) functional morphology across urban parks (8/1/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Habitat Use, Terrestriality and Feeding Behaviour of Javan Slow Lorises in Urban Areas of a Multi-Use Landscape in Indonesia (7/24/2023)
- New Lit Alert: The influence of road networks on brown bear spatial distribution and habitat suitability in a human-modified landscape (7/10/2023)
- Salinity, Urbanization, and Genetic Divergence of Killifish (7/5/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Plasticity in resource use explains the persistence of the largest living rodent in anthropized environments (7/3/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Do urban habitats induce physiological changes in Mediterranean lizards? (6/27/2023)
- The rapid spread of an urban lichen (6/21/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Urban colonies are less aggressive but forage more than their forest counterparts in the ant Temnothorax nylanderi (5/2/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Urban tolerance is phylogenetically constrained and mediated by pre-adaptations in African bats (4/25/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Going Wild in the City–Animal Feralization and Its Impact on Biodiversity in Urban Environments (4/18/2023)
- New Lit Alert: What coloration brings: Implications of background adaptation to oxidative stress in anurans (4/11/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Phenotypic variation along urban-to-rural gradients: an attempt to disentangle the mechanisms at play using the alien species Matricaria discoidea (Asteraceae) (4/4/2023)
- New Lit Alert: High incidence of leg autonomy in urban crickets (3/28/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Cat colonies and flight initiation distances of urban birds: Dealing with conflicting sources of citizen wellbeing (3/27/2023)
- Clinging & climbing & claws, oh my: morphology performance in urban lizards (3/27/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Future directions in urban endocrinology – the effects of endocrine plasticity on urban tolerance (3/21/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Harnessing soil biodiversity to promote human health in cities (3/14/2023)
- Are Squirrels More Stressed in Cities? (2/27/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Climbing and clinging of urban lizards are differentially affected by morphology, temperature, and substrate (2/23/2023)
- Life History of Teenage Mutant Painted Turtles (2/17/2023)
- New Lit Alert: Influence of habitat type and distance from source area on bird taxonomic and functional diversity in a Neotropical megacity (1/30/2023)
- New Lit Alert: The effect of sex on home range in an urban population of European hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus at the southern edge of the species distribution (1/25/2023)
- Parallel Urban Adaptation from Phenotype to Genotype in Anolis Lizards (1/19/2023)
- Rapid Evolution of Urban Water Dragons (1/18/2023)
- Top 10 Urban Evolutionary Ecology Papers of 2022 (1/2/2023)
2022
- Modelling the spread of the invasive Spotted Lanternfly (12/30/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Skyscrapers as Ecological Traps of the Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae): Preliminary Observations (12/28/2022)
- Urban Coyote Dens in Edmonton, Canada (12/23/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Urban-rural gradients: how landscape changes drive adaptive evolution of plant competitive traits (12/16/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Cryptic eco-evolutionary feedback in the city: Urban evolution of prey dampens the effect of urban evolution of the predator (12/6/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Unexpected dispersal of Australian brush-turkeys (Alectura lathami) in an urban landscape (11/24/2022)
- Urbanization and the Avian Endocrine System (11/18/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Activity patterns and behavior of Myocastor coypus in a gated community in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (Argentina) (11/3/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Artificial light at night alters diurnal and nocturnal behavior and physiology in green anole lizards (10/26/2022)
- New Lit Alert: A global meta-analysis reveals higher variation in breeding phenology in urban birds than in their non-urban neighbours (10/1/2022)
- Meta-analysis of Urban Bird Phenology (9/28/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Comfortably Numb? Regional Differences in the Relationship Between Indices of Urbanization and a Stress Indicator in Eastern Gray Squirrels (9/23/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Urbanization drives adaptive evolution in a Neotropical bird (9/19/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Effects of urbanization on the trophic niche of the brown anole, a widespread invasive lizard (9/16/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Urban evolution of thermal physiology in a range-expanding, mycophagous fruit fly, Drosophila tripunctata (9/8/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Fast-paced city life? Tempo and mode of phenotypic changes in urban birds from Switzerland (8/30/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Natural and anthropogenic landscape factors shape functional connectivity of an ecological specialist in urban Southern California (8/26/2022)
- New Lit Alert: The public health implications of gentrification: tick-borne disease risks for communities of color (8/24/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Rock Refuges Are Strongly Associated with Increased Urban Occupancy in the Western Fence Lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis (8/22/2022)
- Do hurricanes rock lizards harder in the city? (8/19/2022)
- New Lit Alert: The impact of urbanization on outcrossing rate and population genetic variation in the native wildflower, Impatiens capensis (8/15/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Harnessing plant-microbiome interactions for bioremediation across a freshwater urbanization gradient (8/11/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Urbanization driving changes in plant species and communities – A global view (8/8/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Plenty of rooftops with few neighbours occupied by young breeding Yellow-legged Gulls (Larus michahellis): does this occur at the expense of their health condition? (8/3/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Coping with novelty across an urban mosaic: Provisioning latency increases closer to roads and is associated with species-specific reproductive success in two urban adapters (8/1/2022)
- CityShape: How Urban Environments Have Shaped the Toes of Puerto Rican Crested Anoles (7/27/2022)
- New Lit Alert: There must bee a better way: A review of published urban bee literature and suggested topics for future study (7/25/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Urban rendezvous along the seashore: Ports as Darwinian field‐labs for studying marine evolution in the Anthropocene (7/22/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Native Lizards Living in Brazilian Cities: Effects of Developmental Environments on Thermal Sensitivity and Morpho-Functional Associations of Locomotion (7/19/2022)
- New Lit Alert: It Is a Wild World in the City: Urban Wildlife Conservation and Communication in the Age of COVID-19 (7/12/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Genetic patterns reveal differences between the invasion processes of common ragweed in urban and non-urban ecosystems (7/11/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Oriented migratory flight at night: Consequences of nighttime light pollution for monarch butterflies (5/19/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Nesting Site and Plumage Color Are the Main Traits Associated with Bird Species Presence in Urban Areas (5/13/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Habitat provision is a major driver of native bird communities in restored urban forests (5/11/2022)
- New Lit Alert: The effects of urbanisation on ecological interactions (5/9/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Urban-adapted Mammal Species Have More Known Pathogens (5/5/2022)
- New Lit Alert: A comprehensive overview of the effects of urbanisation on sexual selection and sexual traits (5/3/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Linking genetic structure, landscape genetics, and species distribution modeling for regional conservation of a threatened freshwater turtle (5/2/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Carnivore Niche Partitioning in a Human Landscape (3/28/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Cat colonies and flight initiation distances of urban birds: Dealing with conflicting sources of citizen wellbeing (3/18/2022)
- Urban Evolution Goes Global: Main findings from the Global Urban Evolution Project (3/17/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Downtown diet: a global meta-analysis of increased urbanization on the diets of vertebrate predators (3/15/2022)
- New Lit Alert: A Theory of City Biogeography and the Origin of Urban Species (3/11/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Connectivity in the Urban Landscape (2015–2020): Who? Where? What? When? Why? and How? (3/7/2022)
- Parallel Evolution of Melanism in Urban Squirrels (3/2/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Variation in hematological indices, oxidative stress, and immune function among male Song Sparrows from rural and low-density urban habitats (2/21/2022)
- New Lit Alert: Detecting patterns of vertebrate biodiversity across the multidimensional urban landscape (2/3/2022)
- New Lit Alert: No evidence for innate differences in tadpole behavior between natural, urbanized, and invasive populations (1/28/2022)
- Top Urban Evolution Papers of 2021 (1/19/2022)
2021
- A New Hope for Urban Pit Building Insects (12/20/2021)
- Is Plastic Always Fantastic? Selection on Thermal Plasticity in Urban Anoles (12/7/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Which Traits Influence Bird Survival in the City? A Review (11/22/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Recent spread of blue tits into the Barcelona urban environment: morphological differences and the role of balanced dispersal (11/19/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Bioindicator snake shows genomic signatures of natural and anthropogenic barriers to gene flow (11/2/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Phenotypic variation in urban environments: mechanisms and implications (11/1/2021)
- Urbanisation Exposes Birds to Metal Pollution (10/29/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Urbanization extends flight phenology and leads to local adaptation of seasonal plasticity in Lepidoptera (10/26/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Consistency and plasticity of risk-taking behaviour towards humans at the nest in urban and forest great tits, Parus major (10/26/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Growing up in a new world: trait divergence between rural, urban, and invasive populations of an amphibian urban invader (10/25/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Does melanin-based plumage coloration reflect health status of free-living birds in urban environments? (10/22/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Age-Related Variability of the Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) Song in Natural and Urban Environments (10/22/2021)
- New Lit Abstract: De Novo Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Potential Thermal Adaptation Mechanisms in the Cicada Hyalessa fuscata (10/21/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Genetic differentiation in pesticide resistance between urban and rural populations of a nontarget freshwater keystone interactor, Daphnia magna (10/21/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Urbanization processes drive divergence at the major histocompatibility complex in a common waterbird (10/20/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Cryptic eco-evolutionary feedback in the city: urban evolution of prey dampens the effect of urban evolution of the predator (10/19/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Replicated, urban-driven exposure to metallic trace elements in two passerines (10/18/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Niche lability mitigates the impact of invasion but not urbanization (10/17/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Invasion success and tolerance to urbanization in birds (10/17/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Species diversity, distribution and habitat utilization of urban wildlife in a megacity of Bangladesh (9/17/2021)
- Moving to the City: Morphology and Performance in Introduced Urban Lizards (7/9/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Moving to the city: testing the implications of morphological shifts on locomotor performance in introduced urban lizards (6/19/2021)
- New Lit Alert: What is known – and not known – about acoustic communication in an urban soundscape (6/18/2021)
- City Lizards Hold Their Footing Against a Category 5 Hurricane (6/18/2021)
- Genomic Urban Adaptation in a Common Bird Across Europe (6/4/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Urban Roosts: Use of Buildings by Florida Bonneted Bats (5/22/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Urban evolution of invasive species (5/13/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Living in discarded containers: spiders explore a new niche created by littering in urban woodlands (5/11/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Morphological divergence, tail loss, and predation risk in urban lizards (5/10/2021)
- New Research: Early Life Experience Influences Dispersal in Coyotes (Canis latrans) (5/7/2021)
- Urban Landscape Genetics: Are Biologists Keeping Up with the Pace of Urbanization? (4/30/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Interactions between the introduced European honey bee and native bees in urban areas varies by year, habitat type and native bee guild (4/26/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Phenotypic response to a major hurricane in Anolis lizards in urban and forest habitats (4/23/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Fine scale genetic structure in fire salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) along a rural‑to‑urban gradient (4/23/2021)
- New Lit Alert: Urban living influences the nesting success of Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos Islands (4/23/2021)
- Urban Lizards Like it Hot (and their genes may tell us why) (2/26/2021)
- How to Study Urban Speciation (2/5/2021)
- Recap: The Finer Points of Urban Adaptation (1/29/2021)
- Incorporating Human Society into Urban Ecology (1/6/2021)
2020
- Genomic Analysis Highlights Cognition in Urban Burrowing Owls (12/15/2020)
- Of City and Village Mice: Behavioural Adjustments of Striped Field Mice to Urban Environments (12/8/2020)
- Little Urban Dragons (11/17/2020)
- Marine Habitats in Urban Ecosystems (11/10/2020)
- Urban Foxes on the Prowl: Urbanization Leads to Differences in Red Fox Skull Shape (10/27/2020)
- Urban Tolerance is Predicted by Brain Size and Behavioral Flexibility (10/6/2020)
- A Global Analysis of Urban Reptiles (9/29/2020)
- Moving to the Music: Hedgehog Behavior Changes in Response to Music Festival (9/22/2020)
- Landcsape Genetics of Wolverines (9/14/2020)
- Systemic Racism Shapes Urban Ecology and Evolution (9/8/2020)
- Understanding the Distribution of Urban Rat-Associated Pathogens (9/1/2020)
- Big in the City: Urban Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics in Bumblebee Body Size and Pollination (8/25/2020)
- CSEE2020: Variation in Pollinator-mediated Plant Reproduction Across an Urbanization Gradient (8/18/2020)
- CSEE2020: Human Influences on Darwin’s Finches (8/11/2020)
- ABS2020: Using Acoustic Signals to Reduce Avian Collisions with Man-made Structures (8/4/2020)
- Some Thoughts on Urban Snakes (7/7/2020)
- Cities and Behavioral Adaptations (6/30/2020)
- Stress Hormones Do Not Reflect Urbanization in Birds and Other Reptiles (6/19/2020)
- Urbanization Leads to Widespread Genetic Connectivity in Pigeons (5/26/2020)
- Conserving Urban Biodiversity Needs an Evolutionary Mindset (5/19/2020)
- Lighting Up Anoles at Night! (5/12/2020)
- Tolerance to Urbanization is Widespread in Anoles (5/5/2020)
- Evolution of Rat Crania in an Urban Environment (4/21/2020)
- Anoles Adapt to Beat the Urban Heat (4/15/2020)
- Eastern Gray Squirrel Behavior in Urban Environments (4/7/2020)
- Monarchs, Milkweed, and Metal: Is Roadside Zinc Pollution Harming Butterflies? (3/31/2020)
- Urbanization Influences Pollinator-Mediated Plant Reproduction (3/17/2020)
- Ants in France: Urbanization without Isolation (3/3/2020)
- Toxic Toads in a Toxic World (2/25/2020)
- European Rabbits Have High Gene Flow in German Cities But Not Other EU Cities (2/18/2020)
- Cities’ Shrinking Gene Pools (2/11/2020)
- Urbanization has Varying Effects on the Population Structure of Six Bird Species in Singapore (2/4/2020)
- The Urban Island: Landscape Genetics of Red Foxes in Berlin (1/21/2020)
- SICB 2020: Artificial Light at Night and West Nile Virus in House Sparrows (1/15/2020)
- Urbanization Reduces Genetic Connectivity in Bobcats (1/14/2020)
- SICB 2020: Urban Lizards Lay Lower Quality Eggs (1/8/2020)
- SICB 2020: Artificial Light at Night and Stress (1/6/2020)
- SICB 2020: Lead Pollution of Human Water Supplies Impacts Songbirds (1/5/2020)