What makes primary forest-dwelling species able to thrive in urban settings?

Abstract

Urbanization is one of the biggest threats to wildlife worldwide as it represents a key factor in land- use changes in biodiversity hotspots, particularly in Tropical rainforests. As urbanization intensifies and tends to grow exponentially in the next century, if we aim to build cities that can preserve biodiversity and essential ecosystem services it is essential to understand the mechanisms that allow wild species to colonize and persist in urbanized areas. To fill this gap, I will combine advanced genomics, quantitative genetics, and network theory to study the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that make Turdus rufiventris, the Rufous-bellied Thrush and symbol bird of Brazil, able to thrive and survive both in their native habitat, the open forests of the Atlantic Rainforest, and megacities in Brazil. I will test the hypotheses that 1) evolutionary adaptation is the mechanism responsible for this Thrush's ability to adapt to urbanization; 2) adaptation to city life will result in a pattern of parallel evolution when comparing different cities; 3) adaptation will be stronger in functional traits that affect fitness, such as beak-related traits that directly influence the diet of this species; and finally 4) adaptation will lead to morphological differentiation between cities and forests populations, which will impact the establishment and success of ecological interactions between individual birds and fruits from different species. This in turn will lead to cascading effects in the ecological communities affecting the species' potential to perform its ecosystem service of seed dispersal. Results from this project will advance our knowledge of urban evolutionary biology and help guide future natural selection studies in wild and urbanized areas, creating a new framework for the study of genotype to phenotype to ecological roles. (AU)