Urban Sexual Selection

Abstract

AbstractHuman-modified habitats can present both challenges and opportunities for wild animals. Changes in the environment caused by urbanization can affect who survives and reproduces in wild animal populations. Accordingly, we can expect that changes in sexual selection pressures may occur in response to urbanization. Changes in sexually selected traits like bird song and colouration have been one of the main thrusts of urban ecology in recent decades. However, studies to date have focused on describing changes in sexual phenotypes in response to urban environmental change, and knowledge about genetic/microevolutionary change is lacking. Also, while some signalling modalities have been well studied and linked to human activities (e.g., changes in auditory signals in response to anthropogenic noise), others have received comparatively less attention in this context (e.g., effects of air pollution on chemical signalling). In addition, the focus has been mainly on the signal sender, instead of the signal receiver, thereby missing an important side of sexual selection. This chapter reviews the evidence that sexual selection pressures and sexually selected traits have been impacted by urban environments, with attention to the potential for rapid adaptive and plastic shifts in traits of signallers and receivers. It explores the possibilities that urbanization causes evolutionary change and speciation in wild animal populations through sexual selection. Finally, it provides new ideas for future studies to explore these questions and especially the evolution of female preferences in urban environments.