Explosion of rats, clovers, bedbugs, mosquitoes unintended evolutionary consequence of urbanization.

Explosion of rats, clovers, bedbugs, mosquitoes unintended evolutionary consequence of urbanization.The recent uproar about seats on a British Airways flight crawling with bedbugs is only one of the unintended consequences that urbanization worldwide has on evolution, say Marc Johnson, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Jason Munshi-South, who is an associate professor of biological sciences at Fordham University. "As we build cities, we have little understanding of how they are influencing organisms that live there," says Johnson, who is also director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban Environments. "It's good news that some organisms are able to adapt, such as native species that have important ecological functions in the environment. But it can also be bad news that the ability of some of these organisms to adapt to our cities might increase the transmission of disease. Bedbugs, for example, were scarce two decades ago, but they've adapted to the insecticides used to keep them at bay and have exploded in abundance worldwide." In the first study to take a comprehensive look at the way urbanization is affecting evolution, Johnson and Munshi-South reviewed all existing research studies about urbanization and evolution and synthesized the results.