Species are capable of rapidly evolving in response to their environment. My research is often designed with a thought towards how humans are changing landscapes, how species are adapting to those changing contexts, and what impact adaptive trait changes might have on broader ecosystem dynamics.
To lay out this train of thought, a collaborator, Max Lambert, and I wrote a paper outlining the key ways in which urban ecosystems should be thought of as hotbeds of potential evolutionary drivers and valuable macrocosms to investigate evolutionary questions.
In the last several years, many researchers have begun thinking about evolution in cities. Watching how species adapt to survive urban ecosystems can give us unique insight into fundamental questions about how evolution proceeds and ecological and evolutionary feedbacks.
Read our paper here or you can watch a short video produced about our paper and the work of several of our colleagues:
Colin Donihue 