Natural selection on plant physiological traits in an urban environment

Lambrecht, Susan C.; Mahieu, Stéphanie; Cheptou, Pierre‐Olivier

doi:10.1016/j.actao.2016.09.002

Cited by 36 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Most studies of urban-induced phenotypic evolution have focused on a single city (table S1). These studies show that urban populations can diverge from nonurban populations in a wide diversity of traits (Table 1), including life-history (72,73), morphology (71,74,75), physiology (34,76,77 ), behavior (78,79), and reproductive traits (39,80,81). Heritable phenotypic divergence is typically attributed to adaptive evolution in response to altered selection between urban and nonurban environments.…”

Section: Natural Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of life in urban environments

Johnson

Munshi‐South

2017

Science

708

691

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Our planet is an increasingly urbanized landscape, with over half of the human population residing in cities. Despite advances in urban ecology, we do not adequately understand how urbanization affects the evolution of organisms, nor how this evolution may affect ecosystems and human health. Here, we review evidence for the effects of urbanization on the evolution of microbes, plants, and animals that inhabit cities. Urbanization affects adaptive and nonadaptive evolutionary processes that shape the genetic diversity within and between populations. Rapid adaptation has facilitated the success of some native species in urban areas, but it has also allowed human pests and disease to spread more rapidly. The nascent field of urban evolution brings together efforts to understand evolution in response to environmental change while developing new hypotheses concerning adaptation to urban infrastructure and human socioeconomic activity. The next generation of research on urban evolution will provide critical insight into the importance of evolution for sustainable interactions between humans and our city environments.

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Section: Natural Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of life in urban environments

Johnson

Munshi‐South

2017

Science

708

691

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“…In an example of adaptation, Cheptou et al [8] observed selection in favour of non-dispersing seeds in an annual plant in Montpellier, France, which improved urban fitness. Selection on functional traits also occurred in the city; urban plants retained physiological changes in size, rates of photosynthesis and concentrations of leaf nitrogen when grown together in a greenhouse with plants from rural sites [69].…”

Section: (B) Physiological Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting ahead of the curve: cities as surrogates for global change

2018

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Urbanization represents an unintentional global experiment that can provide insights into how species will respond and interact under future global change scenarios. Cities produce many conditions that are predicted to occur widely in the future, such as warmer temperatures, higher carbon dioxide (CO) concentrations and exacerbated droughts. In using cities as surrogates for global change, it is challenging to disentangle climate variables-such as temperature-from co-occurring or confounding urban variables-such as impervious surface-and then to understand the interactive effects of multiple climate variables on both individual species and species interactions. However, such interactions are also difficult to replicate experimentally, and thus the challenges of cities are also their unique advantage. Here, we review insights gained from cities, with a focus on plants and arthropods, and how urban findings agree or disagree with experimental predictions and historical data. We discuss the types of hypotheses that can be best tested in cities, caveats to urban research and how to further validate cities as surrogates for global change. Lastly, we summarize how to achieve the goal of using urban species responses to predict broader regional- and ecosystem-level patterns in the future.

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“…Indeed, certain environmental factors, such as drought, are more pronounced in urban areas than in rural areas (Lambrecht, Mahieu, & Cheptou, 2016) and can induce both severe stresses and disturbances damaging the vegetation, accounting for the intermediate response to urbanization of the S-strategists in our study.…”

Section: Ecological Strategies and Flowering Phenologymentioning

confidence: 79%

How does urbanization affect the reproductive characteristics and ecological affinities of street plant communities?

Desaegher

Nadot

Machon

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Anthropogenic activities in urban ecosystems induce a myriad of environmental changes compared with adjacent rural areas. These environmental changes can be seen as series of abiotic and biotic selection filters affecting the distribution of plant species. What are the attributes of plant species that compose urban communities, compared with rural communities, as related to their ecological affinities (e.g., to temperature, humidity), and reproductive traits (e.g., entomophily, autogamy, floral morphology)? Using a floristic dataset from a citizen science project recording plant species growing spontaneously in the streets, we analyzed the distribution of species according to their ecological requirements and reproductive traits along an urbanization gradient in the Parisian region. We developed an original floral and pollinator typology composed of five floral and four pollinator morphotypes. The proportion of impervious areas, used as a proxy of urbanization, was measured at different spatial scales, to reveal at which spatial scales urbanization is selecting plant traits. We found significant differences in plant communities along the urbanization gradient. As expected with the warmer and drier conditions of urban areas, species with higher affinities to higher temperature, light and nutrient soil content, and lower atmospheric moisture were over‐represented in urban plant communities. Interestingly, all of the significant changes in plant abiotical affinities were the most pronounced at the largest scale of analysis (1,000 m buffer radius), probably because the specific urban conditions are more pronounced when they occur on a large surface. The proportion of autogamous, self‐compatible, and nonentomophilous species was significantly higher in urban plant communities, strongly suggesting a lower abundance or efficiency of the pollinating fauna in urban environments. Last, among insect‐pollinated species, those with relatively long and narrow tubular corollas were disadvantaged in urban areas, possibly resulting from a reduction in pollinator abundance particularly affecting specialized plant–pollinator interactions.

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Natural selection on plant physiological traits in an urban environment

Cited by 36 publications

References 41 publications

Evolution of life in urban environments

Evolution of life in urban environments

Getting ahead of the curve: cities as surrogates for global change

How does urbanization affect the reproductive characteristics and ecological affinities of street plant communities?

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