Online toolkits for collaborative and inclusive global research in urban evolutionary ecology.

Urban evolutionary ecology is inherently interdisciplinary. Moreover, it is a field with global significance. However, bringing researchers and resources together across fields and countries is challenging.

American crows that excel at tool use activate neural circuits distinct from less talented individuals.

Tools enable animals to exploit and command new resources. However, the neural circuits underpinning tool use and how neural activity varies with an animal's tool proficiency, are only known for humans and some other primates. We use 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography to image the brain activity of naïve vs trained American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) when presented with a task requiring the use of stone tools.

A global horizon scan for urban evolutionary ecology.

Research on the evolutionary ecology of urban areas reveals how human-induced evolutionary changes affect biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. In a rapidly urbanizing world imposing many selective pressures, a time-sensitive goal is to identify the emergent issues and research priorities that affect the ecology and evolution of species within cities. Here, we report the results of a horizon scan of research questions in urban evolutionary ecology submitted by 100 interdisciplinary scholars.

American Crow Brain Activity in Response to Conspecific Vocalizations Changes When Food Is Present.

Social interaction among animals can occur under many contexts, such as during foraging. Our knowledge of the regions within an avian brain associated with social interaction is limited to the regions activated by a single context or sensory modality. We used 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) to examine American crow () brain activity in response to conditions associated with communal feeding.

The role of urban waterbodies in maintaining bird species diversity within built area of Beijing.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of urban waterbodies in avian ecology, which is instructive for both biodiversity conservation and urban planning. Based on bird surveys conducted in 41 urban parks in Beijing during the breeding and wintering seasons of 2018-2019, and using standardized regression analyses, we identified the specific effects of waterbody attributes on the full avian community and forest bird guilds. We assessed this at multiple spatial scales, first within the focal parks, and then within buffer zones with radius of 200 m and 1000 m.

Individual and social factors affecting the ability of American crows to solve and master a string pulling task.

Crows and other birds in the family Corvidae regularly share information to learn the identity and whereabouts of dangerous predators, but can they use social learning to solve a novel task for a food reward? Here we examined the factors affecting the ability of 27 wild-caught American crows to solve a common string-pulling task in a laboratory setting. We split crows into two groups; one group was given the task after repeatedly observing a conspecific model the solution, the other solved in the absence of conspecific models. We recorded the crows' estimated age, sex, size, body condition, level of nervousness, and brain volume using DICOM images from a CT scan.

Brain activity underlying American crow processing of encounters with dead conspecifics.

Animals utilize a variety of auditory and visual cues to navigate the landscape of fear. For some species, including corvids, dead conspecifics appear to act as one such visual cue of danger, and prompt alarm calling by attending conspecifics. Which brain regions mediate responses to dead conspecifics, and how this compares to other threats, has so far only been speculative.

Population responses of common ravens to reintroduced gray wolves.

Top predators have cascading effects throughout the food web, but their impacts on scavenger abundance are largely unknown. Gray wolves () provide carrion to a suite of scavenger species, including the common raven (). Ravens are wide-ranging and intelligent omnivores that commonly take advantage of anthropogenic food resources.

Occurrence and variability of tactile interactions between wild American crows and dead conspecifics.

Observations of some mammals and birds touching their dead provoke questions about the motivation and adaptive value of this potentially risky behaviour. Here, we use controlled experiments to determine if tactile interactions are characteristic of wild American crow responses to dead crows, and what the prevalence and nature of tactile interactions suggests about their motivations. In Experiment 1, we test if food or information acquisition motivates contact by presenting crows with taxidermy-prepared dead crows, and two species crows are known to scavenge: dead pigeons and dead squirrels.

Space use of suburban pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus): insights on the relationship between home range, core areas, and territory.

Home range, territory, and core areas are concepts that have been used to describe a species' space use. However, little research has been done to understand potential spatial relationships between them. While the relative importance of different areas of the home range has been addressed with utilization distributions, there is a lack of such analysis for territories.

Genomic evidence of speciation reversal in ravens.

Many species, including humans, have emerged via complex reticulate processes involving hybridisation. Under certain circumstances, hybridisation can cause distinct lineages to collapse into a single lineage with an admixed mosaic genome. Most known cases of such 'speciation reversal' or 'lineage fusion' involve recently diverged lineages and anthropogenic perturbation.

Connecting animal and human cognition to conservation.

Expanding human populations favors a few species while extinguishing and endangering many others (Maxwell ., 2016; Pimm ., 2014).

Global urban signatures of phenotypic change in animal and plant populations.

Humans challenge the phenotypic, genetic, and cultural makeup of species by affecting the fitness landscapes on which they evolve. Recent studies show that cities might play a major role in contemporary evolution by accelerating phenotypic changes in wildlife, including animals, plants, fungi, and other organisms. Many studies of ecoevolutionary change have focused on anthropogenic drivers, but none of these studies has specifically examined the role that urbanization plays in ecoevolution or explicitly examined its mechanisms.

Breeding Dispersal by Birds in a Dynamic Urban Ecosystem.

Changes in land cover during urbanization profoundly affect the diversity of bird communities, but the demographic mechanisms affecting diversity are poorly known. We advance such understanding by documenting how urbanization influences breeding dispersal-the annual movement of territorial adults-of six songbird species in the Seattle, WA, USA metropolitan area. We color-banded adults and mapped the centers of their annual breeding activities from 2000-2010 to obtain 504 consecutive movements by 337 adults.

Urban driven phenotypic changes: empirical observations and theoretical implications for eco-evolutionary feedback.

Emerging evidence that cities drive micro-evolution raises the question of whether rapid urbanization of Earth might impact ecosystems by causing systemic changes in functional traits that regulate urban ecosystems' productivity and stability. Intraspecific trait variation-variation in organisms' morphological, physiological or behavioural characteristics stemming from genetic variability and phenotypic plasticity-has significant implications for ecological functions such as nutrient cycling and primary productivity. While it is well established that changes in ecological conditions can drive evolutionary change in species' traits that, in turn, can alter ecosystem function, an understanding of the reciprocal and simultaneous processes associated with such interactions is only beginning to emerge.

Vancomycin resistant Enterococcus spp. from crows and their environment in metropolitan Washington State, USA: Is there a correlation between VRE positive crows and the environment?

Vancomycin-resistant enterococci [VRE] have been isolated from municipal, hospital and agricultural wastewater, recreational beaches, wild animals, birds and food animals around the world. In this study, American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) from sewage treatment plants (WWTP), dairy farms, and a large roost in a restored wetland with corresponding environmental samples were cultured for VRE. A total of 245 samples [156 crows, 89 environmental] were collected and screened for acquired vanA, vanB and/or intrinsic vanC1 genes.

Life span and reproductive cost explain interspecific variation in the optimal onset of reproduction.

Fitness can be profoundly influenced by the age at first reproduction (AFR), but to date the AFR-fitness relationship only has been investigated intraspecifically. Here, we investigated the relationship between AFR and average lifetime reproductive success (LRS) across 34 bird species. We assessed differences in the deviation of the Optimal AFR (i.

Distinct neural circuits underlie assessment of a diversity of natural dangers by American crows.

Social animals encountering natural dangers face decisions such as whether to freeze, flee or harass the threat. The American crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, conspicuously mobs dangers. We used positron emission tomography to test the hypothesis that distinct neuronal substrates underlie the crow's consistent behavioural response to different dangers.

Brain imaging reveals neuronal circuitry underlying the crow's perception of human faces.

Crows pay close attention to people and can remember specific faces for several years after a single encounter. In mammals, including humans, faces are evaluated by an integrated neural system involving the sensory cortex, limbic system, and striatum. Here we test the hypothesis that birds use a similar system by providing an imaging analysis of an awake, wild animal's brain as it performs an adaptive, complex cognitive task.

Social learning spreads knowledge about dangerous humans among American crows.

Individuals face evolutionary trade-offs between the acquisition of costly but accurate information gained firsthand and the use of inexpensive but possibly less reliable social information. American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) use both sources of information to learn the facial features of a dangerous person. We exposed wild crows to a novel 'dangerous face' by wearing a unique mask as we trapped, banded and released 7-15 birds at five study sites near Seattle, WA, USA.

Random interbreeding between cryptic lineages of the Common Raven: evidence for speciation in reverse.

DNA sequence studies frequently reveal evidence of cryptic lineages in morphologically uniform species, many of which turn out to be evolutionarily distinct species. The Common Raven (Corvus corax) includes two deeply divergent mtDNA lineages: one lineage seems restricted to western North America and the other is Holarctic in distribution. These deep clades hint of the possibility of cryptic species in the western United States.

Climatic and landscape correlates for potential West Nile virus mosquito vectors in the Seattle region.

Climatic and landscape patterns have been associated with both relative mosquito abundance and transmission of mosquito-borne illnesses in many parts of the world, especially warm and tropical climes. To determine if temperature, precipitation, or degree of urbanization were similarly important in the number of potential mosquito vectors for West Nile virus in the moderately temperate climate of western Washington, mosquitoes were collected using CDC carbon-dioxide/light traps set throughout the Seattle region during the summers of 2003 and 2004. The type and abundance of recovered species were compared to ecological correlates.