Evolution in an Urbanizing World
When thinking about a city at night, chances are that you include some twinkling streetlights in your mental image. Billboards, streetlamps, and neon signs are no novel presence to city dwellers. These light sources are in technical terms called artificial lights at night, or ALAN for short. While thinking about a city at night can... Continue Reading →
Urbanization has been ever increasing since the start of the industrial revolution and has shown no signs of slowing down. This has lead to cities growing bigger and bigger and thereby imposing new selection pressures on the animals in them. However, quantifying the effects of anthropogenic selection pressures has proven difficult for non-model species due... Continue Reading →
Urban-adapted mammal species have more known pathogens Gregory F. Albery, Colin J. Carlson, Lily E. Cohen, Evan A. Eskew, Rory Gibb, Sadie J. Ryan, Amy R. Sweeny & Daniel J. Becker Abstract The world is rapidly urbanizing, inviting mounting concern that urban environments will experience increased zoonotic disease risk. Urban animals could have more frequent... Continue Reading →
Cities offer an unprecedented global experiment for parallel evolutionary change: they similarly differ in several dimensions including climate, land cover, and pollution. Yet few studies examine evolutionary change across multiple cities, which is critical for identifying environmental characteristics that mediate adaptive responses. For example, city size, age, and habitat connectivity may all contribute to the... Continue Reading →
As we move from a city's core to its outskirts, there seems to be a shift in the kinds of flora and fauna that we can capture with our cameras. Last week we showed flowers in the city center. This week, we move to the outskirts where a photographer was able to capture this image... Continue Reading →
As cities continue to encroach on natural landscapes, bear sightings have become more frequent. If you've ever been camping where there's bears, you know that they have to design special trash bins to keep bears out. So what do we do when they are in the city? We have to design ways to keep bears... Continue Reading →
Urban Roosts: Use of Buildings by Florida Bonneted Bats Elysia N. Webb, Holly K. Ober, Elizabeth C. Braun de Torrez, Jeffery A. Gore, and Ricardo Zambrano Abstract Florida Bonneted Bats, Eumops floridanus, were first documented in Miami, Florida, USA, in the 1930s. We summarized reports of these bats in the greater Miami area throughout the past... Continue Reading →
I am starting to think that foxes are more common in urban areas than we thought... Today's urban observation is another fox! We have had a few previous observations of foxes, one with a magpie, then one in a garden feeding its babies. There is research being done on red foxes in Berlin, featured here... Continue Reading →
PDF version of infographic Download Full paper here: Schmidt, C., Domaratzki, M., Kinnunen, R. P., Bowman, J., & Garroway, C. J. (2020). Continent-wide effects of urbanization on bird and mammal genetic diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1920), 20192497. doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.2497
Mammals are some of the most easily recognizable and endearing critters to share our cities with us. Who doesn't love a cute bunny or squirrel in a city park? Or a fox or raccoon slinking through the streets at night. Even city rats can be endearing. Despite the commonality of these species, urban areas are... Continue Reading →
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