Evolution of plasticity in the city: urban acorn ants can better tolerate more rapid increases in environmental temperature.

ABSTRACT: Because cities contain high levels of impervious surfaces and diminished buffering effects of vegetation cover, urbanized environments can warm faster over the day and exhibit more rapid warming over space due to greater thermal heterogeneity in these environments. Whether organismal physiologies can adapt to these more rapid spatio-temporal changes in temperature rise within cities is unknown, and exploring these responses can inform not only how plastic and evolutionary mechanisms shape organismal physiologies, but also the potential for organisms to cope with urban development. Here, we examined how plasticity in thermal tolerance under faster and slower rates of temperature change might evolve in response to the more rapid spatio-temporal temperature rise in cities. We focused on acorn

SUBMITTER: Diamond SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6007456 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature