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

城市地区在地球仪范围内迅速扩张，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，其中包括美国的主要部分，直接影响生态和物种的进化，但很少有研究已经进行，以了解这些影响的强度和范围。全球变化的另一个重要方面是生物入侵，这威胁到全世界的生物多样性。该项目将全球变化的两个重要方面联系起来，以测试一个新的假设，即城市适应可能会增加生物入侵的成功率，这通常会对入侵的栖息地产生巨大的生态和经济影响。该奖项还将支持博士后研究人员和众多研究生和本科生的STEM培训。将为K-12教育开发课程材料，外联工作将针对将进行这项研究和研究小组成员居住的城市地区。生物体与环境相互作用的方式预计将推动其形态和行为的强烈自然选择。这项工作将研究冠变色蜥蜴，这是原产于波多黎各，但建立了通过人为介导的引进在几个地方以外的自然范围。这项研究将使用现场和实验室研究，首先测试的假设，广泛分布的蜥蜴物种是适应行为，形态和生理城市化。其次，该研究将测试适应是否发生在多个生命史阶段，包括胚胎和青少年。最后，该研究将调查入侵生物学中的一个新想法，即适应城市环境可能使人口成为其他城市地区的成功入侵者，使用分子数据来识别源人口。该研究的详细部分将估计热耐受性并检查不同栖息地的行为温度调节，使用SNP来识别入侵者的源种群，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适应城市地区是否可以促进生物入侵的过程，并可能导致可以推广到其他城市耐受物种和生物入侵的结论。

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.