D w media center ah ah. Busy ringback in a lot of ways you can think of cities as. Busy one of the largest unplanned experiments of all time. Mm that these are places we call them extreme heavy. Thats really there are places where there is a lot of opportunity. And at the same time, theres also challenges. As all cities spread, how well nature respond . Will plants and animals dwindle, or will they adapt to up in life . And what kind of new interactions will we see in the city . In the historic french town of, ill be biologist frederick song to keep an eye on his catfish. In 1983 fishermen released these Eastern European fish into the river time to day there at the top of the rivers food chain where you seduced this machine on the bus. This is the fascinating species because we know so little about them. There are many myths that people believe even that they eat dogs. There are many stories like this yank, or you could just walk. The biologist is interested in the behavior of the large fish that circled the reservoir basins on 5th, on a, to kentucky. But we work with fishermen to tag the fish and follow. Yeah, they contacted us after observing very strange behavior in the fish here salvage conflict along it. Cause you see ill be the man my landscape at the city fosters new encounters between species. Busy lip, your ease, latigion have never had to face predators from the water level gallant 8th. Instead they scanned the sky for birds of prey. Didnt you see the pigeons approached the water to bathe and drink sometimes about misses the narrow strip of safe ground and touches down in open water of atlas. Youre the catfish dont really see the pigeons unfit. But once they sense the Birds Movement in the water with their barble silly fuel, then they strike. I should all ah, scientists observe the cant fishes new hunting tactic for the 1st time in 2010. Here in abbey, pigeons are no longer safe on the water. The city is bringing together new predators and pray ah, for some catfish here, pigeons now account for up to 40 per cent of their prey. Theyre suddenly this ecological interaction, which allows for evolution to start to improve the bird catching ability of the catch fish and also to improve the escape ability of the pension. So you can expect that all these new interactions are also causing new evolutionary dynamics. Dont, evolutionary biologist, minnow, shell 1000 researches the adaptation of wildlife to the city. Darwins theory he believes, has gone up and ah, ebony pollution is evolutionary change. So really genetic change in wild animals and plants in cities. Its all about understanding how species will be able to survive in this very human dominated context cities, a homo sapiens, most extreme intervention in nature with concrete and steel. We create new landscapes and alter the face of the of. Ready already, most people live in cities rather than in the countryside. How does this influence evolution, the development of new species . What selection pressures does the city create . A summer evening in the dodge capital amsterdam in the fall, dell park in the center of the city biologist, men oh, shoot. Hows him . Uses a light trap to catch insects. Oh, hes leading a Citizen Science project to explore urban nature. Ah, for insects and for some smaller plans, the diversity today in cities seems to be higher than in intensively managed agricultural areas. Today. Agricultural land is so intensively managed and every last bit of production is squeezed out of every square meter of surface area. Theres no space for nature anymore in the countryside, and at the same time, cities get more, they get greener, people pay more attention to nature and to and to urban nature. So its actually becoming very rich environment with, with a higher by diversity than outside of the c o n. We are rapidly losing bio diversity. Both within and outside out it is for insect, the declines are particularly severe. Ah, in this way sounds to me as eric scientists to fully an ultimate has set up his light trusted, ever since humans began to light up the night. Millions of nocturnal insects have been dying off every year. And its all for a species like this, being attracted by light is problematic because then its confused. The few short days it has is a month to lags. Come Light Pollution is one of the major trends demands. Scientists are even going, is found to describe it as an insect apocalypse. Thank you. Yes, i think for the clients we are seeing now are already quite worried. Studies show a 60 to 80 percent decline and biomass. How do i sometimes even in nature reserves that these are incredibly large numbers. Its all in my childhood. They used to observe much like these from the colman. I would set up this trap next to my parents house and attract months actually quite large numbers. But today i would probably not find many of them help. Often i stopped to his solemn thought with the choice of movies, miss mcgee living but might in fact be capable of adapting to life in the perpetual night of our fit is flowing. An alternate wanted to find out his test, subject the spindle and the most whose caterpillars develop on the european spindle tree. Not of what i actually was a coincidence. While i was working on my ph. D thesis. Every day i walked through a park that had these european spindle bushes. And i noticed that with these caterpillars, these moths, which must have lived there for years in a city park with permanent Light Pollution in some east. I thought i could just collect them, raise them, and test how much the adult months are attracted by light, video, locksmith and formalist. With experiments in 2006 altamont pioneered research into urban evolution, he released the mouth in a darkened room. The next morning he counted how many had flown into the light trying to keep it on the ruffles showed a difference about 20 percent fewer urban lots had flown into the trap hall station around working on saturday. But all started i was very surprised. It was widely known that matson retracted by lights some more than others sheet about him. These differences have always been observed between different species in the whole scene, variations within a single species that weve never seen before. Often they experiment clearly demonstrated and hereditary adaptation to life in the city. Direct proof of, of an evolution. For dont biologist men oh, shall 1000 to findings confirm a larger picture in amsterdam. He and his group of citizens, scientists debate whether we might soon observe even more and greater adaptations of animals and plants to the city. Ready ready we see that evolutionary processes are starting which will eventually or who eventually produce new theses that are specialized on living in the 50 nano. Shell thompson, its not ish, but when every organism that lives in the city will show this urban evolution, these rapid changes in their behavior, in their physiology, in their appearances, to optimize their life in an urban environment. But wont elements of urban landscapes, prompt wildlife to adapt evolutionary biologists. Jason monkeys, south is an expert on animals found in the parks of new york. For years, he has been studying how rodents adapt to the city. Along with human immigrants from europe, rats also voyage to the new world. Today they roamed the city and subway tunnels most native wrote in species, however, dom dan, trying to unlock crossing town. This distinction sparked the scientists interest. I used to be a tropical biologist, but then i moved to new york city for my 1st academic job after graduate school and i decided i wanted to do some local work that would be interesting to the people of new york city and to my eyes out and i, i found out that there was a small mammal living in the sense, the islands of boris and video. But thats interesting. Nobodys really ever looked at these. Are they becoming jagged, different from mice outside the city or they had thing thats out all started central park opened in 873. Its still hosts animal species that lived here long before the city was built right now were in the middle of central park. Were going to be traveling to the north end of the park where theres a very nice for, its called the northwood. And there will be setting out traps hopefully to capture white put in my one of the things that inspired me when i 1st started this work is if you look at a new york city, subway map, you see the subway lines. But then there are these large green shapes, rectangles and overalls, and so forth that are the, the park lands. And they put those on the map so you know where they are. But you also see that they are almost like a chain of islands that are scattered in the sea of concrete and roads and buildings, and 8 and a half 1000000 people. So in a sense, if its a species like a mouse that cant leave the 4th cross neighborhoods and buildings and roads and make it to the other patch. It is essentially the same biologically as if they were on an island in terms of them not being able to move and spread their genes with the other patches. And these urban patches, once they become sufficiently isolated, operate like a mini galapagos and may be driving the evolution of many species that are stuck there. Now, the evolutionary biologists investigating whether the white footed mice actually develop indistinct ways in each of the various palms. That would be a really nice spot for white for my they like to move next to log. So theyre not completely out in the open. They might actually even be living inside this log where its rotting or in holes underneath the log. So this is pretty much the ideal spot. This forest is encircled by the big apple. Had the mice already adapted to this unique environment . What traits do they need to survive here . Ah, no shortage of good trapping spots. Later ill be going to one of our more suburban, almost rural sites with the larger, more intact forests, less urban zation. And ill be setting out, you know, an equal number of traps. So the hope that we catch mice there as well. Jason mankey south will search within the animals genetic codes for the marcus of life in the big city. Oh, i think whats been most interesting to me is thinking about how the things that we are all doing in our daily lives, where we put our garbage. What were choosing to eat, and what we generate is ways where we choose to live, how we choose to go to work, or how to restaurant or something. All of these things were doing are now influencing other species in a way that were just starting to understand it. But its not only animals that adapt to human intervention in the natural world. Plans to the same. In southern france, the yellow flowered crap. His sanctum is being studied by biologist pierre only via shipped to dip you so does the news crept this santa is a very common species in the mediterranean regions, a kind of mediterranean dandelion from the same family from you. And its essential advantage as a model is that it produces 2 types of seeds would read the large ones and small ones and dig. Also, the small wild flower produces both like to see with parachutes, allowing them to glide and heavy, a seeds that simply fall to the ground measurement of us. Oh, im interested in the process of adaptation to an urban environment. And in particular, what happens when a species 1st arrives in the city . It is recently colonized certain areas of mold, pitying in my comparison between rural urban populations this i focus on the traits related to seeds. Lee, thank you again. The idea of studying the adaptation of the plant to the city came to ship to almost by chance. When he came back from abroad, he noticed the inconspicuous flowers growing in the city, aid of japan, moiety nija. I left montreal in the middle of a blizzard dodge. I took the plain for paris. I even then i took the bus to downtown montpelier, where it was sunny with a Clear Blue Sky is all of young also. And then i noticed there were crap as sunk to flowers everywhere, and those tiny urban patches. And suddenly it struck me that there was something to figure out here, demila, but i didnt yet know exactly what miss lucy youngs weak. Because actually the crap his sank to thrives in rural areas and not in the asphalt deserts of the city. Let me not ignore the predominant component in cities, especially in european cities, is concrete. Its urine concrete exerts a powerful, fragmenting force on the habitats of plants, the police. They have to survive in many by a tow facility only puts a beat up. Sometimes the cities constraints on a plans habitat can be extreme. How will evolution respond . Also schema domestic. Im looking at how urban fragmentation will modify the dispersal traits of the species his best. I expect plants that produce more of the larger seeds will be more successful at reproduction in urban areas than they would be in the open country. Oh, the heaviest seeds are less likely to be swept onto the asphalt. And indeed, the biologists discovered that far more plants in the city produced the heavier seeds and are thus better able to survive a difference of 15 percent. But what stands out most is the speed of this adaptation. Infected and were sure the avalanche and weve seen has taken about 15 years. So this is extremely brief. It was the 1st demonstration of such a rapid evolution of sea traits for plants. And this is due to the highly fragmented composition of the urban environment, a genetic changes occurring at such a rate of long been considered unlikely even impossible by science or i think i would have been amazed by the, the fastness, by which these changes take place. He was, it was sort of underestimating the power of Natural Selection himself. He said that you never see any of these changes in progress. You cannot actually observed that. You can only deduce them from the fulfills from the patterns that you see in nature. You said that the venetian is too slow to see it happening in real time and effect that now today, especially in cities, we see these changes taking place under our eyes in the streets where we live right around us. I think darwin would have been thrilled. But what if man made pollutants substantially distort the bio chemistry of organisms. In the 1970s, the water New Bedford Harbor, the boston, was severely polluted with p. C. Bs. The u. S. Environmental protection agency. Wanted to know just how bad the pollution really was. The original focus was on what must be wrong with all the fish that live in that harbor because of the toxic chemicals. Instead, we came here looking, trying to understand what must be right about those fish that could survive here. Mm. So theyve become a natural experiment for us to study how animals can adapt to toxic human made pollutants. Terrific, just what were looking for. Lets get him into a net. Bring him back to the lab. Diane, not, she had the Environmental Protection agency lab in narragansett, rhode island in that reading facility. The scientists want to unravel the mechanism that allows this population of kili fish species to survive in the p. C. B polluted water of new bedford hava. So lets see if they left any eggs flora, they planned to compare eggs from the new bedford hob, a fish with those of a fish population from a clean a site. Oh, lets start a test and see what they do when we expose them to chemical. These killy fish species that cause all along the north American Atlantic coast to killy. Fish has been a favorite of biology literally for centuries at they are quite common. They are non migratory, so they reflect their local environments. And each population is unique in that it is genetically different. It is adapted to its local environment. So it gives us opportunity for lots of studies. The researchers need to observe the development of the fish embryos in the ag, in order to understand at which stages the environmental talks and disrupt the animals, biochemistry or not. Ah, so well look at the rate at which the embryo is developed and certain features that we know that p c. Bees can disturb, like a Proper Development of the heart. Evidence of Proper Development of the circulatory system and proper body side. Mm. Why, of these particular fish able to resist deadly in her mental talk sense . What are the factors that allow individual species to adapt to the city . All parallel developments taking place in cities wild white. At the university of toronto, mississauga, evolutionary biologist, mark johnson, pursues these questions in a lot of ways, you can think of cities as one of the largest unplanned experiments of all time. The problem is, is theres very few organisms where you could study annotation to urban environments. On a global scale and white clover is one of those very few organisms where you can actually do that. So now this then becomes the model to understand whether organisms in general can adapt to the convergent environmental changes. So she was cities throughout the world. Research is across the globe by working together in this study, evolutionary biologist, stephan guyana, and his team are collecting the white clover in berlin. In cities, the plant face is a different habitat temperatures a higher than in the suburbs, and the countryside was one avenue in con is. And what you can expect is that as humans creates new environmental conditions mindful adapt. And to be able to showed up on a global scale, thats a real scientific benefit. And that is why were dedicating a free time to this project runs on, filed them as they proceed from the countryside to the city center of berlin, ghana and his team collect specimens at 35 locations. This gives them a sufficiently broad range of data to compare with that of other global cit is they find to have final samples at the foot of the Television Tower spot. Thats it all done in all we have a 168 cities right now and over 250. 00 collaborators all working on the same project together. Theres never been a collaborative project on evolutionary biology of this scale. And so this is the largest collaborative project in evolutionary biology ever. So is clover developing in the same way all over the world, into a kind of global city, clover, from the vast set of data, the research is hope to find an answer. Oh, in the grounds of a Research Institute knowles, of new york geneticist, jason mankey south wants to catch white footed mice to compare that dna with that of those in the city. But its not easy. Ready okay, ah ah, so this is a trap that was opened, it didnt catch anything. Obviously thats a toad that it was a map day for me while i think youre really surprised that almost every park was different from every other park. Its almost to the point where you could take a mouse from one park, give it to our lab, and we could just look at a small segment of his genome and tell you where its it came from. Thats how much they had changed just randomly over time from being isolated. And thats when we started our current studies looking at, you know, over 20000 genes to