Heinen-Kay Justa L, Kay Adam D, Zuk Marlene
Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior University of Minnesota St. Paul USA.
Biology Department University of St. Thomas St. Paul USA.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Dec 14;11(24):17625-17650. doi: 10.1002/ece3.8328. eCollection 2021 Dec.
Urbanization is rapidly altering landscapes worldwide, changing environmental conditions, and creating novel selection pressures for many organisms. Local environmental conditions affect the expression and evolution of sexual signals and mating behaviors; changes in such traits have important evolutionary consequences because of their effect on reproduction. In this review, we synthesize research investigating how sexual communication is affected by the environmental changes associated with urbanization-including pollution from noise, light, and heavy metals, habitat fragmentation, impervious surfaces, urban heat islands, and changes in resources and predation. Urbanization often has negative effects on sexual communication through signal masking, altering condition-dependent signal expression, and weakening female preferences. Though there are documented instances of seemingly adaptive shifts in trait expression, the ultimate impact on fitness is rarely tested. The field of urban evolution is still relatively young, and most work has tested whether differences occur in response to various aspects of urbanization. There is limited information available about whether these responses represent phenotypic plasticity or genetic changes, and the extent to which observed shifts in sexual communication affect reproductive fitness. Our understanding of how sexual selection operates in novel, urbanized environments would be bolstered by more studies that perform common garden studies and reciprocal transplants, and that simultaneously evaluate multiple environmental factors to tease out causal drivers of observed phenotypic shifts. Urbanization provides a unique testing ground for evolutionary biologists to study the interplay between ecology and sexual selection, and we suggest that more researchers take advantage of these natural experiments. Furthermore, understanding how sexual communication and mating systems differ between cities and rural areas can offer insights on how to mitigate negative, and accentuate positive, consequences of urban expansion on the biota, and provide new opportunities to underscore the relevance of evolutionary biology in the Anthropocene.
城市化正在迅速改变全球各地的景观，改变环境条件，并给许多生物带来新的选择压力。当地环境条件会影响性信号和交配行为的表达与进化；这些特征的变化因其对繁殖的影响而具有重要的进化后果。在这篇综述中，我们综合了相关研究，探讨了与城市化相关的环境变化是如何影响性交流的，这些变化包括噪声、光和重金属污染、栖息地破碎化、不透水表面、城市热岛效应以及资源和捕食的变化。城市化往往通过信号掩盖、改变依赖条件的信号表达以及削弱雌性偏好等方式对性交流产生负面影响。尽管有记录表明性状表达存在看似适应性的转变，但对适合度的最终影响却很少得到检验。城市进化领域仍然相对年轻，大多数研究都在测试是否因城市化的各个方面而出现差异。关于这些反应是代表表型可塑性还是基因变化，以及观察到的性交流变化在多大程度上影响繁殖适合度，目前可用信息有限。通过更多进行共同花园实验和相互移植研究，并同时评估多种环境因素以梳理出观察到的表型变化的因果驱动因素的研究，将有助于我们理解性选择在新型城市化环境中的运作方式。城市化给进化生物学家提供了一个独特的试验场，用于研究生态与性选择之间的相互作用，我们建议更多研究人员利用这些自然实验。此外，了解城市和农村地区在性交流和交配系统方面的差异，可以为如何减轻城市扩张对生物群的负面影响以及强化其正面影响提供见解，并为强调进化生物学在人类世的相关性提供新的机会。
