Urban Evolutionary Biology

About this book

Urban Evolutionary Biology fills an important knowledge gap on wild organismal evolution in the urban environment, whilst offering a novel exploration of the fast-growing new field of evolutionary research. The growing rate of urbanization and the maturation of urban study systems worldwide means interest in the urban environment as an agent of evolutionary change is rapidly increasing.

We are presently witnessing the emergence of a new field of research in evolutionary biology. Despite its rapid global expansion, the urban environment has until now been a largely neglected study site among evolutionary biologists. With its conspicuously altered ecological dynamics, it stands in stark contrast to the natural environments traditionally used as cornerstones for evolutionary ecology research.

Urbanization can offer a great range of new opportunities to test for rapid evolutionary processes as a consequence of human activity, both because of replicate contexts for hypothesis testing, but also because cities are characterized by an array of easily quantifiable environmental axes of variation and thus testable agents of selection. Thanks to a wide possible breadth of inference (in terms of taxa) that may be studied, and a great variety of analytical methods, urban evolution has the potential to stand at a fascinating multi-disciplinary crossroad, enriching the field of evolutionary biology with emergent yet incredibly potent new research themes where the urban habitat is key.

Urban Evolutionary Biology is an advanced textbook suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers studying the genetics, evolutionary biology, and ecology of urban environments. It is also highly relevant to urban ecologists and urban wildlife practitioners.

Contents

Foreword, Marina Alberti
1: Introduction, Marta Szulkin, Jason Munshi-South and Anne Charmantier
2: How to quantify urbanisation when testing for urban evolution, Marta Szulkin, Colin J. Garroway, Michela Corsini, Andrzej Z. Kotarba and Davide Dominoni
3: Urban environments as a framework to study parallel evolution, James S. Santangelo, Lindsay S. Miles, Sophie T. Breitbart, David Murray-Stoker, L. Ruth Rivkin, Marc T. J. Johnson and Rob W. Ness
4: Landscape genetic approaches to understanding movement and gene flow in cities, Jason Munshi-South and Jonathan L. Richardson
5: Adaptation genomics in urban environments, Charles Perrier, Aude Caizergues and Anne Charmantier
6: Evolutionary consequences of the urban heat island, Sarah E. Diamond and Ryan A. Martin
7: The evolutionary ecology of mutualisms in urban landscapes, Rebecca E. Irwin, Elsa Youngsteadt, Paige S. Warren and Judith L. Bronstein
8: Sidewalk plants as a model for studying adaptation to urban environments, P.O. Cheptou and S. Lambrecht
9: Adaptive evolution of plant life history in urban environments, Amanda J. Gorton, Liana T. Burghardt and Peter Tiffin
10: Urbanization and evolution in aquatic environments, R. Brian Langerhans and Elizabeth M.A. Kern
11: Evolutionary dynamics of metacommunities in urbanized landscapes, Kristien I. Brans, Lynn Govaert and Luc De Meester
12: Terrestrial locomotor evolution in urban environments, Kristin M. Winchell, Andrew C. Battles, Talia Y. Moore
13: Urban evolutionary physiology, Caroline Isaksson and Frances Bonier
14: Urban sexual selection, Tuul Sepp, Kevin J. McGraw and Mathieu Giraudeau
15: Cognition and adaptation to urban environments, Daniel Sol, Oriol Lapiedra, and Simon Ducatez
16: Selection on humans in cities, Emmanuel Milota and Stephen C. Stearns

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Biography

Marta Szulkin is an evolutionary biologist who completed her first at the University of Warsaw, Poland. She holds a Masters and a Doctoral degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Oxford (UK). Marta was as Magdalen College Research Fellow (University of Oxford), and a Marie Curie Fellow at CEFE CNRS in Montpellier (France). She is currently associate professor at the Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw (Poland). She is managing a prospectively long-term study of urban great tits and blue tits in Warsaw, and is interested in the evolution and ecology of all urban life.

Jason Munshi-South is an evolutionary ecologist that completed a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, USA, and a postdoctoral position at the Smithsonian Institution. He is currently a Professor of Biological Sciences at Fordham University in Bronx, NY, USA. His main research interests are the ecology and evolution of urban wildlife, with special emphasis on the landscape genomics of urban rodents.

Anne Charmantier is an evolutionary ecologist educated in France, the UK and Canada, and presently holding a senior permanent CNRS position. Her main research interests are focused on understanding the mechanisms involved in the evolution of adaptive traits, especially in a context of rapid anthropogenic changes. Since 2007, she is managing a long-term blue tit project, which contributes to her research on local adaptation, plasticity, senescence, ecological genomics and sexual selection. She has particularly pioneered quantitative genetic approaches in wild populations, to study adaptive and non-adaptive responses to climate change and urbanisation.


Contributors:
- Andrew C. Battles, University of Rhode Island, USA
- Sophie T. Breitbart, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto, Canada
- Frances Bonier, Queen's University, Canada
- Kristien I. Brans, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
- Judith L. Bronstein, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
- Liana T. Burghardt, University of Minnesota, USA
- Pierre-Olivier Cheptou, Université de Montpellier, France
- Davide Dominoni, University of Glasgow, UK and Netherlands Institute of Ecology, the Netherlands
- Aude Caizergues, Université Paul-Valery Montpellier, France
- Anne Charmantier,Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, Montpellier, France
- Michela Corsini, University of Warsaw, Poland
- Luc De Meester, KU Leuven, Belgium
- Sarah E. Diamond, Case Western Reserve University, USA
- Simon Ducatez, Centre for Ecological Research and Applied Forestries, Spain and McGill University, Canada
- Colin J. Garroway, University of Manitoba, Canada
- Amanda J. Gorton, University of Minnesota, USA
- Lynn Govaert, KU Leuven, Belgium; Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and University of Zürich, Switzerland
- Rebecca E. Irwin, North Carolina State University, USA
- Caroline Isaksson, Lund University, Sweden
- Marc T. J. Johnson, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto, Canada
- Elizabeth M.A. Kern, Ewha Womans University, South Korea
- Andrzej Z. Kotarba, Centrum Badan Kosmicznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk (CBK PAN), Poland
- R. Brian Langerhans, North Carolina State University, USA
- Susan C. Lambrecht, San Jose University, USA
- Oriol Lapiedra, Centre for Ecological Research and Applied Forestries, Spain
- Ryan A. Martin, Case Western Reserve University, USA
- Kevin J. McGraw, Arizona State University, USA
- Lindsay S. Miles, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada
- Emmanuel Milot, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
- Talia Y. Moore, University of Michigan, USA
- Jason Munshi-South, Fordham University, USA
- David Murray-Stoker, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto, Canada
- Rob W. Ness, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto, Canada
- Charles Perrier, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, Montpellier, France
- Jonathan L. Richardson, University of Richmond, USA
- L. Ruth Rivkin, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto, Canada
- James S. Santangelo, University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto, Canada
- Tuul Sepp, University of Tartu, Estonia
- Daniel Sol, Centre for Ecological Research and Applied Forestries, Spain
- Stephen C. Stearns, Yale University, USA
- Marta Szulkin, University of Warsaw, Poland
- Peter Tiffin, University of Minnesota, USA
- Paige S. Warren, University of Massachusetts, USA
- Kristin M. Winchell, Washington University, USA
- Elsa Youngsteadt, North Carolina State University, USA