Do urban habitats induce physiological changes in Mediterranean lizards? R Vardi, S Dubiner, R Ben Bezalel, S Meiri, E Levin Abstract Urban environments offer dramatically different habitats for wildlife compared with natural environments. They provide, for example, different levels of resource availability, anthropogenic night light, and microclimates (e.g., urban heat islands). For reptiles, increased temperatures... Continue Reading →
Urban Lizards Like it Hot (and their genes may tell us why)
Cities are hot. Because of the urban heat island effect, urban environments tend to be significantly warmer than nearby non-urban environments. For ectothermic organisms, like lizards and insects, elevated urban temperatures create thermally stressful conditions. It might be unsurprising then that researchers have documented an increase in thermal tolerance in urban animals (e.g., City Ants... Continue Reading →