New York - Empire of Evolution

Dr. Munshi-South, a scientist from Brunch College in New York who has studied various aspects that affect nature, animals, and biodiversity around the world. Dr. Munshi-South along with two graduate students and Ellen Pehek, a senior in the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, decided to do some research in New York City right off the city’s borders – an area that not many scientists have studied before and was full of hurdles. Dr. Munshi-South is part of a growing number of field biologists who study urban evolution, the biological changes that cities bring to the wildlife that inhabits them.

White-footed mice, stranded on isolated urban islands, are evolving to adapt to urban stress. Fish in the Hudson have evolved to cope with poisons in the water. Native ants find refuge in the median strips on Broadway, and more familiar urban organisms, like bedbugs, rats and bacteria, also mutate and change in response to the pressures of the metropolis. The process of evolution is responding to the cities countless environmental changes – life adapts.

Changes occur due to many reasons, pollution forces change, bacteria adaptations, biological melting pot, newcomers and natives. In addition to several others, these natural phenomena alter every aspect of the biological changes on the planet.

Please click on this link for further reading NYTimes