Collaborative Research: Urban Adaptation and its Role in the Success of Biological Invasion in Anolis Lizards

城市地区在全球范围内迅速扩张，导致环境与自然景观相比发生了巨大变化：建筑物和停车场取代了城市中的自然植被。城市环境覆盖了美国的大部分地区，直接影响着物种的生态和进化，但很少有人进行研究来了解这些影响的强度和范围。全球变化的另一个关键方面是生物入侵，它威胁到世界各地的生物多样性。该项目将全球变化的两个重要维度联系起来，以检验一个新的假设，即城市适应可能会增加生物入侵的成功，生物入侵往往对入侵的栖息地产生巨大的生态和经济影响。该奖项还将支持STEM对一名博士后研究员以及众多研究生和本科生的培训。将为K-12教育编写课程材料，外展工作将针对进行这项研究的城市地区和研究小组成员居住的地方。生物体与环境相互作用的方式有望推动对它们的形态和行为进行激烈的自然选择。这项工作将研究羽冠变色蜥蜴，这种蜥蜴原产于波多黎各，但通过人工中介在其自然活动范围以外的几个地方建立。这项研究将利用野外和实验室研究，首先检验广泛分布的蜥蜴物种在行为、形态和生理上适应城市化的假设。其次，这项研究将测试适应是否发生在多个生活史阶段，包括胚胎和青少年。最后，这项研究将探索入侵生物学中的一个新想法，即适应城市环境可能使种群预先准备成为其他城市地区的成功入侵者，使用分子数据来识别来源种群。研究的详细部分将评估热耐力并检查不同栖息地的行为温度调节，使用SNPs来识别入侵者的来源种群，并检查栖息地对该领域发展的影响。这项研究将有助于确定是否适应城市地区可以促进生物入侵的过程，并可能导致的结论，可以推广到其他城市耐受物种和生物入侵。

Urban areas are expanding rapidly around the globe, resulting in drastic changes to the environment compared to natural landscapes: buildings and parking lots replace natural vegetation in cities. The urban environment, which encompasses a major portion of the US, directly affects the ecology and evolution of species, but little research has been conducted to understand the intensity and scope of these effects. Another critical dimension of global change is biological invasions, which threaten biodiversity worldwide. This project connects two important dimensions of global change to test a novel hypothesis that urban adaptation may increase the success of biological invasions, which often have dramatic ecological and economic effects on the invaded habitats. This award will also support the STEM training of a postdoctoral researcher and numerous graduate and undergraduate students. Curriculum materials will be developed for K-12 education and outreach efforts will target the urban areas where this research will be conducted and where the research team members live. The way organisms interact with their environment is expected to drive intense natural selection on their morphology and behavior. This work will study the crested anole lizard, which is native to Puerto Rico but established via human-mediated introductions in several places outside its natural range. This research will use field and laboratory studies to first test the hypothesis that a widespread lizard species is adapted behaviorally, morphologically, and physiologically to urbanization. Second, the study will test if adaptation occurs at multiple life history stages, including embryos and juveniles. Lastly, the study will investigate a novel idea in invasion biology that adaptation to urban environments may predispose populations to become successful invaders of other urban areas, using molecular data to identify source populations. Detailed portions of the research will estimate thermal tolerance and examine behavioral thermoregulation in different habitats, use SNPs to identify the source population of the invaders, and examine habitat influence on development in the field. This research will help to establish whether or not adaptation to urban areas can facilitate the process of biological invasion, and will likely lead to conclusions that can be generalized across other urban tolerant species and biological invasions.