Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural clines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale.

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Background: Peatlands play a key role in the global carbon cycle; these contain one third of the world's soil organic carbon, equivalent to more than half the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, these ecosystems have been scarcely studied in southern South America. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the recent accumulation rates of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in two kinds of oligotrofic peatlands in Isla Grande de Chiloé (Chile). Results: Using peat C and N content, dry bulk density, and Pb-210 dating, we determined the rates of N and C accumulation in profiles from five peatlands in the northern Chilean Patagonia. The recent rate of C accumulation (RERCA) ranges from 8.5 to 87.06 g C m −2 year −1 , and the recent rate of N accumulation (RERNA) ranges from 0.15 to 2.37 g N m −2 year −1 . The difference in RERCA and RERNA between glacial peatlands and anthropogenic peatlands was significant. One of the remarkable results is that accumulation of N and C are directly related. Conclusions: This study contributes for a better understanding of the Patagonian peatlands of Chile. In addition, this research contributes by setting a basis for conducting further studies and for assessing the impacts of climate change on peatlands.

Countries that are signatories of the Convention of Biological Diversity are committed to the goal of protecting 17% of their natural ecosystems by 2020. The lack of an up-to-date, operational classification and cartography of regional ecosystems seriously limits the assessment of progress towards this goal. Here, we present a broad ecosystem framework, which combines land use, functional traits of dominant plant species, and climatic factors for the classification of terrestrial ecosystems and apply this framework to classify Chilean terrestrial ecosystems. This new classification is consistent with the recently proposed IUCN framework to assess ecosystem conservation status. Using this framework, we identified and described 30 Chilean terrestrial ecosystems, including land units of natural and anthropogenic origin. We also provide a cartographic representation of ecosystems for land planning purposes and an overall assessment of their conservation status. We evaluated the representation of the 30 ecosystems in the Chilean National System of Protected Areas (NSPA) and in Private Protected Areas (PPA), identifying 15 123Biodivers Conserv (2017) 26:2857-2876 DOI 10.1007/s10531-017-1393 ecosystems underrepresented (below the 17% target) in the NSPA, in contrast to only 11 when the area of NSPA?PPA was considered. The proposed classification can be broadly applicable to assess the conservation status of ecosystems elsewhere, using similar conceptual and methodological tools. The development of functional ecosystem classifications for different countries must be encouraged to facilitate monitoring of global conservation targets.