The story of evolution as you’ve never heard it before What’s the easiest way to tell species apart? Check their genitals. Researching private parts was long considered taboo, but scientists are
*Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts.*Lizards in Puerto Rico are evolving feet that better grip surfaces like concrete.*Europe’s urban blackbirds sing at a higher pitch than their rural cousins, to be heardover the din of traffic.How is this happening?Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of “urban ecologists” studying how our manmade environments are accelerating and changing the evolution of the animals and plants around us. In Darwin Comes to Town, he takes us around the world for an up-close look at just how stunningly flexible and swift-moving natural selection can be.With human populations growing, we’re having an increasing impact on global ecosystems, and nowhere do these impacts overlap as much as they do in cities. The urban environment is about as extreme as it gets, and the wild animals and plants that live side-by-side with us need to adapt to a whole suite of challenging conditions: they must manage in
FROM EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST MENNO SCHILTHUIZEN, A BOOK THAT WILL MAKE YOU SEE YOURSELF AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU IN AN ENTIRELY NEW WAYFor a long time, biologists thought evolution was a necessarily sl
In an age of increasing environmental problems, ecology has had to grow up fast from a discipline dealing with relatively simple interactions between species to one that tries to explain changes in gl
We are marching towards a future in which three-quarters of humans live in cities, and a large portion of the planet's landmass is urbanized. With much of the rest covered by human-shaped farms, pastu
An ecologist and evolutionary biologist takes us on a fascinating foray through animal genitalia to demonstrate that the more we learn about the private parts of various species, the more we understan
