Department of Biology, Clarkson University, Box 5805, Potsdam NY, 13699, USA.
Center for Tree Science, Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL 60532, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2021 Oct 14;61(4):1237-1252. doi: 10.1093/icb/icab065.
The city and its urban biome provides an extreme laboratory for studying fundamental biological questions and developing best practices for sustaining biodiverse and well-functioning ecological communities within anthropogenic built environments. We propose by studying urban organisms, urban biotic communities, the urban biome, and the interactions between the urban biome and peri-urban built and natural environments, we can (1) discover new "rules of life" for the structure, function, interaction, and evolution of organisms; (2) use these discoveries to understand how novel emerging biotic communities affect and are affected by anthropogenic environmental changes in climate and other environmental factors; and (3) apply what we have learned to engage residents of the urban biome, and design cities that are more biologically diverse, are provided with more and better ecosystem services, and are more equitable and healthier places to live. The built environment of the urban biome is a place that reflects history, economics, technology, governance, culture, and values of the human residents; research on and applications of the rules of life in the urban biome can be used by all residents in making choices about the design of the cities where they live. Because inhabitants are directly invested in the environmental quality of their neighborhoods, research conducted in and about the urban environment provides a great opportunity to engage wide and diverse communities of people. Given the opportunity to engage a broad constituency-from basic researchers to teachers, civil engineers, landscape planners, and concerned citizens-studying the translation of the rules of life onto the urban environment will result in an integrative and cross-cutting set of questions and hypotheses, and will foster a dialog among citizens about the focus of urban biome research and its application toward making more equitable, healthy, livable, sustainable, and biodiverse cities.
城市及其城市生物群落为研究基本生物学问题提供了一个极端实验室，并为在人为建造环境中维持生物多样性和功能良好的生态群落开发最佳实践。我们提出，通过研究城市生物、城市生物群落、城市生物群系以及城市生物群系与城市周边建成和自然环境之间的相互作用，我们可以：(1) 发现生物结构、功能、相互作用和进化的新“生命法则”；(2) 利用这些发现了解新出现的生物群落如何影响和受到气候和其他环境因素人为环境变化的影响；(3) 将所学知识应用于城市生物群系的居民，设计出生物多样性更高、提供更多和更好生态系统服务、更公平和更健康的居住场所的城市。城市生物群系的建成环境反映了人类居民的历史、经济、技术、治理、文化和价值观；城市生物群系中生命法则的研究和应用可以被所有居民用来选择他们居住的城市的设计。由于居民直接投资于他们所在社区的环境质量，因此在城市环境中进行的研究为广泛而多样化的人群提供了一个很好的参与机会。如果有机会让从基础研究人员到教师、土木工程师、景观规划师和有关公民在内的广泛选民参与研究，将生命法则转化为城市环境的问题和假设将具有综合性和跨学科性，并将促进公民之间就城市生物群系研究的重点及其在实现更公平、健康、宜居、可持续和生物多样性城市方面的应用进行对话。
