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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
A New Adaptive Landscape: Urbanization As A Strong Evolutionary Force, Lauren Christie Breza
A New Adaptive Landscape: Urbanization As A Strong Evolutionary Force, Lauren Christie Breza
Masters Theses
Urbanization is rapidly increasing as human population growth steadily grows, but there is little consensus of the ecological consequence of this population shift and almost no information of the evolutionary consequences for local biodiversity. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population will live in city centers by 2050 with profound impacts on landscapes that can act as important agents of selection. This study aims to identify 1) the net effect of urbanization on species richness, 2) how phylogenetic diversity varies between urban and rural sites, and 3) the strength of urbanization as a selection pressure. First, a meta-analysis was conducted in …
Branching Out: How Virginia Can Strategically Use Trees To Combat Biodiversity Loss, Taylor Pfeiffer
Branching Out: How Virginia Can Strategically Use Trees To Combat Biodiversity Loss, Taylor Pfeiffer
Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Projects
Biodiversity loss is a particularly concerning effect of climate change because as greenhouse gas emissions increase global temperatures, decreases in the abundance and diversity of species has reduced ecosystem resiliency to these changes (Verchot et al. 2007). Weakened ecosystems and threatened species decrease the environment’s capacity to provide humans with services like safe drinking water, fuel, and protection from natural disasters, just to name a few (US EPA 2013). The agricultural industry plays a unique role in this environmental conversation, as farmland both contributes to climate change and is jeopardized by the negative effects created by the issue in a …