Darwin comes to town: how cities are creating new species

[Solly Mack]

From the nut-cracking crows of Sendai to ‘Turdus urbanicus’ (the new urban blackbird), animals are changing their behaviour and evolution in cities – and in dramatic and surprising ways

The urban melting pot

In tune with their human population, cities have been assembled from immigrants from around the globe. Either intentionally or accidentally, people have been ferrying flora and fauna across the world for as long as they have been trading and travelling.

The ubiquitous Javan myna birds of Singapore first arrived as pets from Indonesia around 1925, sought after at the time as virtuoso impersonators. They now rival the human population in terms of numbers (and noise). The bright-green ring-necked parakeet, originally hailing from India and Africa, has established itself in European cities thanks to the caged-bird trade for much of the 20th century. In London, they feast on seeds of horse chestnut trees brought from Greece.

Releasing 40 parakeets in 1974 “because Brussels could use some more colour”, the owner of a Belgian zoo singlehandedly founded the country’s entire population, now numbering some 30,000 birds.

At the end of the 19th century, drug manufacturer Eugene Schieffelin decided to bring to the US every bird ever mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. In 1890 and 1891, he shipped 80 breeding pairs of European starlings (Henry IV Part 1) from England and released them in New York’s Central Park. Today, there are about as many starlings as there are people in North America.

Interesting article on how speciation is occurring in cities and town and not just far off places. Birds being some of the more obvious examples.