Meeting Abstract
As urban areas continue to grow, understanding how species respond and adapt to urbanization is becoming increasingly important. Knowledge of the mechanisms behind observed phenotypic changes in urban animals will enable us to better judge the impact of urbanization on current and future generations of urban wildlife while also shedding light on how animals respond to novel environments. In the past decade, urban ecology has emerged as a means of understanding organismal adaptation but also as a framework for exploring mechanisms mediating evolutionary phenomena. This symposium will bring together leading experts in ecology and evolutionary biology who work in a broad range of taxa using innovative techniques. The overarching goals of this symposium are to: 1) develop an integrative framework for characterizing and predicting individual and population responses to urbanization at a larger and longer-term scale, one that will guide and inspire the field of behavioral and physiological adaptation; 2) development of an experimental approach to the study of urban eco-physiology which has been so far largely lacking; 3) integrate physiological mechanisms with behavioral studies for individual-based characterization of urban adapters or avoiders; 4) develop new connections between SICB and the larger community of ecologists whose work involves urban ecology.
