Gentrification drives patterns of alpha and beta diversity in cities.

While there is increasing recognition that social processes in cities like gentrification have ecological consequences, we lack nuanced understanding of the ways gentrification affects urban biodiversity. We analyzed a large camera trap dataset of mammals (>500 g) to evaluate how gentrification impacts species richness and community composition across 23 US cities. After controlling for the negative effect of impervious cover, gentrified parts of cities had the highest mammal species richness.

Mammals adjust diel activity across gradients of urbanization.

Time is a fundamental component of ecological processes. How animal behavior changes over time has been explored through well-known ecological theories like niche partitioning and predator-prey dynamics. Yet, changes in animal behavior within the shorter 24-hr light-dark cycle have largely gone unstudied.

Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover.

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors.

Landscape-scale differences among cities alter common species' responses to urbanization.

Understanding how biodiversity responds to urbanization is challenging, due in part to the single-city focus of most urban ecological research. Here, we delineate continent-scale patterns in urban species assemblages by leveraging data from a multi-city camera trap survey and quantify how differences in greenspace availability and average housing density among 10 North American cities relate to the distribution of eight widespread North American mammals. To do so, we deployed camera traps at 569 sites across these ten cities between 18 June and 14 August.

How Metamorphosis Is Different in Plethodontids: Larval Life History Perspectives on Life-Cycle Evolution.

Plethodontid salamanders exhibit biphasic, larval form paedomorphic, and direct developing life cycles. This diversity of developmental strategies exceeds that of any other family of terrestrial vertebrate. Here we compare patterns of larval development among the three divergent lineages of biphasic plethodontids and other salamanders.

Salamander abundance along road edges and within abandoned logging roads in Appalachian forests.

Roads may be one of the most common disturbances in otherwise continuous forested habitat in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Despite their obvious presence on the landscape, there is limited data on the ecological effects along a road edge or the size of the "road-effect zone." We sampled salamanders at current and abandoned road sites within the Nantahala National Forest, North Carolina (U.

Hatching asynchrony, survival, and the fitness of alternative adult morphs in Ambystoma talpoideum.

The mole salamander, Ambystoma talpoideum, exhibits both aquatic (gilled) and terrestrial (metamorphosed) adult morphologies. Previous studies have shown the existence of body-size advantages associated with the terrestrial morph in A. talpoideum and other polymorphic salamanders (e.

Ultrastructure of the reproductive system of the black swamp snake (Seminatrix pygaea). III. Sexual segment of the male kidney.

In mature male snakes and lizards, a distal portion of the nephron is hypertrophied in relation to its appearance in females and immature males. This sexual segment of the male kidney apparently provides seminal fluid that is mixed with sperm and released into the female cloaca during copulation. In this article, we provide the first study at the ultrastructural level of seasonal variation in the sexual segment of the kidney of a squamate, the natricine snake Seminatrix pygaea.