Given the right conditions, life in the city might just lead to speciation. Wouter Halfwerk digs into the potential for and evidence of urban speciation in his latest paper in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Halfwerk points out that many studies have revealed both genetic and phenotypic divergence in urban populations, but asks are we seeing... Continue Reading →
Urban Speciation
Above: Fig. 2 from Rivkin et al: many species have been shown to adapt to cities. Thompson et al. ask whether or not this could lead to speciation. Organisms that persist in urban environments are subject to novel selective pressures as they exploit this novel niche space. We now know that this ecological shift can lead to... Continue Reading →