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Urbanization and the spread of artificial light
- anarbadalov 7y agoThis is a startling and beautifully written excerpt from environmental philosopher Christopher Preston's recent book about how humans are fundamentally reshaping the natural world. Specifically, it explores the ways in which our increasingly urban (and light-polluted) world is changing behaviors and even genomes of species, including our own. (full disclosure: I work on the MIT Press Reader) For a species that spent close to 200,000 years living in grasslands and scrubby forests, hunting and foraging, and using skins, wood, and grasses for shelter, we are increasingly occupying an evolutionarily unfamiliar niche, where the sensory and physical dimensions of a life lived in daily contact with the natural world have been replaced by a whole set of alternate experiences: Cement and traffic, 90-degree corners, bars, sirens, glass, and streetlights increasingly dominate our senses. As far as our genes are concerned, we live in an alien world. ... Alongside us, fast-breeding and opportunistic species are changing their behaviors and their genomes so that they will fit better in the urban world. City-dwelling swallows are evolving shorter wings that allow them to avoid the traffic better, and sparrows and starlings have raised the pitch of their calls to compensate for the background urban noise. Moths are gaining different color patterns so that they have more suitable camouflage in their new concrete habitat. Evolutionary forces are turning city-bound mice into separate subspecies in different city parks, unable to exchange genes with cousins who live a few blocks away.
- jakeogh 7y agoGreat resource for light pollution: https://darksky.org https://darksky.org