Biologia Futura: adaptive changes in urban populations

摘要: Cities represent novel environments where altered ecological conditions can generate strong selection pressures leading to the evolution of specific urban phenotypes. Is there evidence for such adaptive changes in populations which have colonized their new relatively recently? A growing number studies suggest that rapid adaptations may be widespread wild populations, including increased tolerance various anthropogenic stressors, and physiological, morphological behavioural response resources predation risk. Some these are based on genetic differentiation, although other mechanisms, as phenotypic plasticity epigenetic effects, also frequently involved.