Darwin Comes to Town
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
See your city through fresh eyes
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, pasture, and plantations, where can nature still go? To the cities -- is Menno Schilthuizen's answer in this remarkable book. And with more and more wildlife carving out new niches among humans, evolution takes a surprising turn. Urban animals evolve to become more cheeky and resourceful, city pigeons develop detox-plumage, and weeds growing from cracks in the pavement get a new type of seeds. City blackbirds are even on their way of becoming an entirely new species, which we could name Turdus urbanicus.
Thanks to evolutionary adaptation taking place at unprecedented speeds, plants and animals are coming up with new ways of living in the seemingly hostile environments of asphalt and steel that we humans have created. We are on the verge of a new chapter in the history of life, Schilthuizen says -- a chapter in which much old biodiversity is, sadly, disappearing, but also one in which a new and exciting set of life forms is being born.
Menno Schilthuizen shows us that evolution in cities can happen far more rapidly, and strangely, than Darwin had dared dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a conversational style as appealing as it is informative, Schilthuizen (Nature's Nether Regions), an evolutionary biologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, explores myriad ways in which plants and animals have adapted to modern urban environments. Given the dramatic increase in urbanization that's currently underway "by 2030, almost 10 percent of all people on earth will live in only 41 megacities" Schilthuizen is both realistic and optimistic in calling these environments "an exciting, novel ecological phenomenon." Schilthuizen's examples are fascinating, from changes in the immune systems of bobcats living in Hollywood, Calif., to the catfish in Albi, France, that have learned to leap out of the water, grab pigeons frolicking on the beach, and drag them beneath the surface to be eaten "in a few large gulps." The changes scientists have observed, coupled with habitat fragmentation, "may be enough to start the splitting of the gene pools, and incipient urban speciation." Schilthuizen is careful throughout to distinguish between true evolutionary changes and learned behaviors passed between individuals. He also does a superb job of introducing important ecological principles along the way, leaving readers with a fascinating question: "Can we harness the power of urban evolution to use it to make more livable cities for the future?"
