Friday, November 2, 2018

Who Would Have Thought: Darwin in the City

Mosquitoes are proving more adaptable than humans, at least in some quarters.
Note a piece by science writer David Quammen in the recent New York Review that the so-called London underground mosquito has evolved to a new form. What's more, the populations that have taken root below are genetically different according to the different tube line where they now live.
The world changes. Grows more urban by the minute. By mid-century,  six billion of the earth's nine billion people will live in cities with consequences too enormous to contemplate.
A few other species shifting their character as a result, Quammen points out in his book review,  are house crows of Singapore, coyotes of Chicago, ring-necked parakeets of Paris and a few others learning to tolerate new environments.
 What changes will the human make, apart from turning (conveniently or not) into a robot?

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