Cities Are Affecting Evolution as Many Species Adapt to Urban Living

November 12, 2018 3:54 AM

In The Concrete Jungle, Wildlife Evolves Astonishingly Fast. "Menno Schilthuizen is a Dutch biologist based at Leiden University, in a country whose population is more urban than rural. In other words, he inhabits the future. His new book, Darwin Comes to Town alerts us to new evidence about the pace of evolution. By watching the evolutionary play as it runs in urban theaters, not just wildish ones, Schilthuizen and some colleagues—you might think of them as postmodern biologists, making the best of highly urbanized twenty-first-century landscapes—have noticed that evolution’s tempo can be surprisingly brisk. Fast evolution in cities is the theme here, unfolding toward a suggestion that perhaps new species are being born in our time, while many older ones are being driven to extinction."

Urban Evolution: How Natural Life Adapts to Human Cities. The rise of the urban jungle has forever changed nature, but some animals are evolving faster than we can build.

White Clover Can Be an Annoying Weed. It May Also Hold Secrets to Urban Evolution. The ubiquitous plant alters its defense systems in a tougher environment, prompting researchers to call it a perfect test species for study as urban areas expand.

Town-dwelling spiders are not afraid of the light: That lets them weave their webs in streetlamps

Urban avian rivalry: Birds fight it out for food and shelter in big cities

posted by homunculus (14 comments total)

Human beings are the most affected.
Huge numbers of city dwellers would die in the country.
posted by Burn_IT at 4:28 AM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]

I live in a townhouse in the middle of the city and I'm always amazed at how much wildlife survives on the streets. We've got bunnies, groundhogs, possums, bats, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats and even the occasional deer. That's in addition to all the various insects and birds.

We also have constant battles with vines that would take over in a year if humans left. My garage hosts a contest between the ivy on one side and the wild grape vines on the other. If I didn't constantly cut them back during the summer, the building would be enveloped.
posted by octothorpe at 5:05 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

Trajan's forum has crabs
posted by BWA at 6:35 AM on November 12, 2018 [5 favorites]

oh man, I love urban ecology so much--partly this might be because (unusually for someone in my line of work) I came to biology from being interested in domestic animals, and partly maybe because I'm basically an indoor cat, but I think mostly it's because urban ecology looks at ecosystems as including and incorporating humans and points out that humans are a real and central part of our own ecosystems.

I can't wait for hydropsyche to wake up and see this fpp.
posted by sciatrix at 6:52 AM on November 12, 2018 [8 favorites]

Who are these people who are annoyed by clover?
posted by pracowity at 7:30 AM on November 12, 2018

My wife also writes about this stuff. Here's a piece on osprey she wrote for Bay Nature, and another Bay Nature piece on the evolution of urban bird songs.
posted by touchstone033 at 7:52 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]

Who are these people who are annoyed by clover?

I wondered the same thing.

My favourite fact about clover, learned surprisingly late in life considering I grew up in houses with clover lawns: it closes its leaves at night!
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:29 AM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

I love having clover in my lawn. It's so soft on bare feet! It stays green with no effort/little water, never grows tall, provides flowers for bees.
posted by emjaybee at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2018 [10 favorites]

The evolutionary tango of animal genitalia. "Genitals are the fastest-evolving organs in the animal kingdom. But why is this so? And what’s the point of having decorative private parts? Menno Schilthuizen explains how the evolutionary biology of nature's nether regions uncovers a hidden world of seduction, conflict, and rivalry."
posted by homunculus at 8:41 AM on November 12, 2018

I've said this before a million times:

Evolution is reeeally slow.
Natural Selection can be as fast as lightning.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:56 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]

> My wife also writes about this stuff. Here's a piece on osprey she wrote for Bay Nature, and another Bay Nature piece on the evolution of urban bird songs.

Is your wife the author of this piece about the “Girl Reporters” of the late 19th century?
posted by homunculus at 9:41 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

I strongly suspect the tipping point for play dead/pass out vs. run away has been changing for possums even in my life time, just because "play dead" is not a good defense with cars. (I'd expect something similar for skunks due to the inadequacies of spraying stink as defense against cars, but I don't see skunks much anyway.)
posted by dilettante at 9:45 AM on November 12, 2018

I am here! This is a very cool post that I am looking forward to digging into tonight.

Also worth thinking of are those animals who don't have to adapt to us to thrive in urban environments but who we could learn to live with better, like, of course, the humble beaver. A great new paper just came out: Reintegrating the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) in the urban landscape (Wiley link for those with access, Research Gate for those without)
posted by hydropsyche at 11:47 AM on November 12, 2018 [6 favorites]

Is your wife the author of this piece about the “Girl Reporters” of the late 19th century?

Why, yes! It is! She's written a lot about the history of environmentalism (including a biography of Maria Sybilla Merian), and has shifted to other historical topics.
posted by touchstone033 at 12:47 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]