“Urban ecosystems are rapidly expanding throughout the
world, but how urban growth affects the evolutionary ecology of species living
in urban areas remains largely unknown. Urban ecology has advanced our
understanding of how the development of cities and towns changes environmental
conditions and alters ecological processes and patterns. However, despite
decades of research in urban ecology, the extent to which urbanization
influences evolutionary and eco‐evolutionary change has received little
attention. The nascent field of urban evolutionary ecology seeks to understand
how urbanization affects the evolution of populations, and how those
evolutionary changes in turn influence the ecological dynamics of populations,
communities, and ecosystems. Following a brief history of this emerging field,
this Perspective article provides a research agenda and roadmap for future
research aimed at advancing our understanding of the interplay between ecology
and evolution of urban‐dwelling organisms. We identify six key questions that,
if addressed, would significantly increase our understanding of how
urbanization influences evolutionary processes. These questions consider how
urbanization affects non‐adaptive evolution, natural selection, and convergent
evolution, in addition to the role of urban environmental heterogeneity on
species evolution, and the roles of phenotypic plasticity vs adaptation on
species’ abundance in cities. Our final question examines the impact of
urbanization on evolutionary diversification. For each of these six questions,
we suggest avenues for future research that will help advance the field of
urban evolutionary ecology. Lastly, we highlight the importance of integrating
urban evolutionary ecology into urban planning, conservation practice, pest
management, and public engagement.”
From: Evolutionary Applications Pub Date :
2018-11-12 , DOI: 10.1111/eva.12734
L. Ruth Rivkin; James S. Santangelo; Marina Alberti; Myla F.
J. Aronson; Charlotte W. de Keyzer; Sarah E. Diamond; Marie‐Josée Fortin;
Lauren J. Frazee; Amanda J. Gorton; Andrew P. Hendry; Yang Liu; Jonathan B.
Losos; J. Scott MacIvor; Ryan A. Martin; Mark McDonnell; Lindsay S. Miles;
Jason Munshi‐South; Robert Ness; Amy E.M. Newman; Mason R. Stothart; Panagiotis
Theodorou; Ken A. Thompson; Brian C. Verrelli; Andrew Whitehead; Kristin M.
Winchell; Marc T. J. Johnson
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