Evolution in an Urbanizing World
Pathogens are organisms that cause disease, and zoonotic pathogens are those that can be transmitted between animals and people. Where pathogens are found can be determined by environmental changes. Urbanization is known to mediate environmental changes in cities as well as impact biodiversity. In Brazil, Belo et al. (2011) found a higher prevalence of parasites... Continue Reading →
This week's post comes from Dale Stevens, who tells us about the effects of elevated urban temperatures on black widow spiders. Along with landscape changes, urbanization also leads to a significant increase in temperature. Human-made surfaces retain heat during the day and stay hot well into the night. Because of this, animals that thrive in... Continue Reading →
When was the last time you cleaned your bird feeder? Bird feeders are a common sight in the city. For many, they represent a chance to view nature from the comfort of their own home, with little else required but to go out each morning to fill the feeder in their pajamas. This gives city... Continue Reading →
Ecomorphology describes how an animal’s physical traits (called morphology) match how it uses its habitat. It is assumed that ecomorphology results from performance-morphology relationships across different habitats. For instance, running speed (a measure of performance) could be affected by limb length (a measure of morphology), but this relationship varies based on habitat (e.g. type of... 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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