Does urbanization trigger plant evolution?
Urban environments have become hotspots for understanding how rapid evolution occurs in response to extreme environmental changes. These habitats exert selective pressures on resident organisms that impact their evolutionary trajectories. Recently, researchers investigated how the creeping woodsorrel plant might adapt in response to elevated temperatures that result from urbanization. Understanding these effects can help predict evolutionary traits to manage plant evolution in the face of shifting climatic conditions.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.