Dataset
Data from: Gene flow and genetic drift in urban environments
30 Aug 2019
Abstract
Evidence is growing that human modification of landscapes has dramatically
altered evolutionary processes. In urban population genetic studies,
urbanization is typically predicted to act as a barrier that isolates
populations of species, leading to increased genetic drift within
populations and reduced gene flow between populations. However,
urbanization may also facilitate dispersal among populations, leading to
higher genetic diversity within and lower differentiation between urban
populations. We reviewed the literature on non-adaptive urban evolution to
evaluate the support for each of these urbanse urban fragmentation and
facilitation models. In a review of the literature with supporting
quantitative analyses of 167 published urban population genetics studies,
we found a weak signature of reduced within-population genetic diversity,
and no evidence of consistently increased between-population genetic
differentiation associated with urbanization. In addition, we found that
urban landscape features act as barriers or conduits to gene flow,
depending on the species and city in question. Thus, we speculate that
dispersal ability of species and environmental heterogeneity between
cities contribute to the variation exhibited in our results. However,
greater than 90% of published studies reviewed here showed an association
of urbanization with genetic drift or gene flow, highlighting the strong
impact of urbanization on non-adaptive evolution. It is clear that
organism biology and city heterogeneity obscure patterns of genetic drift
and gene flow in a quantitative analysis. Thus, we suggest that future
research makes comparisons of multiple cities and nonurban habitats, and
takes into consideration species’ natural history, environmental
variation, spatial modelling, and marker selection.
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Details
- Title
- Data from: Gene flow and genetic drift in urban environments
- Creators
- Lindsay MilesL. RivkinMarc JohnsonJason Munshi-SouthBrian Verrelli
- Publisher
- Dryad
- Resource Type
- Dataset
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Biodiversity, Earth, and Environmental Science (BEES)
- Other Identifier
- 991021904312104721