How war, politics and religion shape the evolution of fauna in cities

People often consider evolution as a process that occurs in the wild in the background of human society. But the evolution is not distinct from human beings. In fact, human cultural practices can influence the evolution of wildlife. This influence is very pronounced in cities, where people considerably modify the landscapes to meet their own needs.

Human actions can affect the evolution of fauna in several ways. If people fragment habitat, separate wild populations can evolve to be more and more different from each other. If people change certain local conditions, it can put pressure on the organizations of new ways which mean that different genes are favored by natural selection and transmitted to offspring – another form of evolution which can be motivated by what people do.

In a recent journal, evolutionary biologists Marta Szulkin, Colin Garroway and I, in collaboration with scientists spread on five continents, explored how cultural processes, in particular religion, politics and war – are expanding urban evolution. We have reviewed dozens of empirical studies on urban fauna around the world. Our work highlights that human cultural practices have and continue to shape the evolutionary trajectory of animals and wild plants.

Religious practices

If you have traveled internationally, you may have noticed that the menu in any McDonald’s restaurant is shaped by the local culture of its location. With the United Arab Emirates, McDonald’s serves a fully halal menu. Vegetarian articles are common and no beef is served in Indian McDonald’s. And in the United States, McDonald’s File-O-Fish is particularly popular during Lent, when observers do not consume meat on Friday.

Likewise, cities ecosystems are shaped by local cultural practices. Because all the fauna is linked to the environment, the cultural practices that modify the landscape shape the evolution of urban organizations.

For example, in Oviedo, Spain, people have built walls around religious buildings between the 12th and 16th centuries. This division of the city led to different populations of fire salamanders inside and outside the walls. Because salamanders cannot evolve these walls, those on the opposite sides have become isolated from each other and unable to pass genes back and forth.

In a process that scientists call genetic drift, over time, salamanders of both parties have become genetically distinct – evidence of the two populations evolving independently.

Imagine pouring a handful of M&M. Just by chance, some colors could be overrepresented and others could be missing. In the same way, genes that are over -represented on one side of the wall can be in small number or missing on the other side. It is a genetic drift.

Another way of the introduction of non -native fauna that people can change urban ecosystems and evolutionary processes. For example, the release of prayer animals is a practice that started in the fifth or the 6th century in certain sects of Buddhism. Practitioners who strive not to harm a living creature released captive animals, which benefits the animal and is supposed to improve the karma of the person who released it.

However, these animals are often captured from nature or come from pet trade, thus introducing non -native fauna into the urban ecosystem.

Non-Autochtones can compete with local species and contribute to the local extinction of native fauna. Capturing nearby animals also has drawbacks. It can decrease local populations, because many die by traveling to the liberation ceremony. The genetic diversity of these local populations decreases in turn, reducing the ability of the population to survive.

Influence of politics

Political motivation campaigns have shaped wildlife in various ways.

From 1958, for example, the Chinese Communist Party led a movement to eliminate four species considered as parasites: rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. While the first three are generally considered parasites from around the world, the sparrows have made the list because they were “public animals of capitalism” because of their penchant for cereals.

The extermination campaign ended up decimating the population of the sparrow and damaging the entire ecosystem. The sparrows no longer hunt and do not eat insects, crop pests such as locusts thrive, leading to the destruction of cultures and famine.

In the United States, racial policy can shape evolutionary processes in wildlife. For example, American motorways are going through cities according to political agendas and have often dismantled poor -colored neighborhoods to make way for multiple arteries.

These highways can change the way animals can disperse and behave. For example, they prevent red lynx and coyotes from moving through Los Angeles, leading to models of differentiation of the similar population, as seen in the salamanders of fire in Spain.

Fauna during and after the war

Human religious and political agendas often lead to armed conflicts. Wars are known to considerably change the environment, as current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine show.

While documenting evolutionary changes in urban fauna is secondary to ensure the safety of people in wartime, a handful of studies on fauna have come out of active war areas. For example, the current Russian-Ukraine war affected the migration of larger spotted eagles.

They made large entertainment around the active war zone, later arriving that usual in their breeding ground. The longer road has increased the energy used by eagles during migration and probably influenced their physical shape during breeding.

Wars limit access to resources for people living in active war areas. The lack of energy to heat the houses in Ukraine during the winter led urban residents to harvest the wood of neighboring forests. This harvest will have long -term consequences on forest dynamics, probably modifying the future evolutionary potential.

A similar example is the famine that occurred during the civil wars of the Democratic Republic of Congo (1996–1997, 1998-2003) and led to an increase in the consumption of bush meat. This fauna hunt is known to reduce the size of primates, which makes them more sensitive to local extinction.

Even after the war, the landscapes contain consequences.

For example, the demilitarized area between North Korea and South Korea is a 160 -mile barrier (250 kilometers), established in 1953, separating the two countries. Fortified fortified with razor thread and terrestrial mines, the demilitarized area has become a de facto sanctuary of nature supporting thousands of species, including dozens of endangered species.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led to the establishment of the European green belt, which exploits the same path as the iron curtain. This protected ecological network lasts more than 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) long, allowing fauna fauna to move freely in 24 countries in Europe.

Like the Korean DMZ, the European green belt allows the fauna to move, raise and exchange genes, despite political borders. Politics has removed the human influence of these spaces, allowing them to be a safe refuge for wildlife.

While researchers have documented a number of examples of wildlife evolution in response to human history and cultural practices, there is much more to discover. Cultures differ in the world, which means that each city has its own set of variables that shape the evolutionary processes of wildlife.

Understanding how these human cultural practices shape evolutionary models will allow people to better design cities that support both humans and fauna that call these places at home.

This article is republished from the conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.