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Evolution in an urban environment; convergent and divergent and its implications and related subcategories Explanation of the issue: 1. Urbanization is the shift of the population from rural into urban areas. In addition to social, and economic importance, has ecological and evolutionary implications: cities are more polluted, experience stronger warming and housing and infrastructure limits the habitat of many species, leading to a sharp decrease in, and the diversity of species living there is reduced. While many species are lost, but can also allow some species are able to adapt. Global urbanization is creating ecosystems with unknown consequences for evolution of species/life. Urbanization affecting both nonadaptive and adaptive evolution. Populations of a native species often represent a relict from a previous period or populations established after a city was formed. Since gene flow among urban areas is reduced, this increases genetic differentiation between populations (Johnson & Munshi-South, 2017). 2.Urban environments are warmer, have a higher concentrations of CO2 and have changed patterns of disturbance and precipitation compared to rural areas.These differences can be important for things such as plant growth and will most likely create selective environments. When grown in a popular environment such as a city, plants grown from seeds collected from urban areas bolted sooner, grew larger, had fewer leaves, had an extended time between flowering, and produced more seeds than plants grown from seeds collected from rural areas. Selection in urban environments favors different traits than selection in rural environments, and these differences can drive adaptation and shape the population as a whole (yakub & Tiffin, 2016). 3.Urban environments such as cities have developed many challenging environments for numerous species which influence the health of us humans who share an environment with. Examples such as residential segregation have led to an unfair share of nature within these urban environments. Urban areas are dynamic ecological environments that are defined by interdependent biological, physical, and social components. All of these factors is what lets us humans and many other species live in these environments. Integration of social and ecological sciences are needed when deconstructing urbanizations patterns and processes, equal initiatives promoting justice to all species, strengthen the community we live in and global environmental change (Schell, Dyson, Fuentes, et al., 2020). 4.Convergent evolution is when two or more different species end up either evolving into one species, or evolving similar adaptive traits. This happens out of necessity, often because of the food the animals eat or the predators they must evade. If a predator has great eyesight, then it would not be surprising if some of their prey evolved to have the ability to camouflage themselves, regardless of their species. An insect and a bird could both evolve this trait, and it would be considered convergent evolution even though they are not becoming the same species. This is because they are evolving similar adaptive traits (Witt & Huerta-Sánchez, 2019). Similar conditions in various urban areas encourage convergent evolution such as the Coronavirus in urban areas of Haiti. Many cases were in patients from the main campuses of their schools that live in semi-urban and urban areas (Lednicky, Tagliamonte, White, et al., 2021). This reveals that the Coronavirus is converging and adapting in heavy populated environments to attach to humans and reach everyone. The same trait(s) will emerge in different patients but the virus itself will change with the environment. 5.Divergent evolution is when members of the same species evolve different traits because of factors such as different environments, different food sources, or situational limitations. If these traits continue to grow in number, then another species may arise, and ultimately be completely separate from the original species. One bird may eat exclusively small seeds, while others may eat exclusively large seeds. If this persisted over an extended period of time, then beak shapes or sizes would likely change. An animal wants the easiest and fastest way to consume their food for competition reasons, so if evolution did not help them along with this, it would put them at a great disadvantage (Gautam, 2020). From changes to genes to adaption, urbanization is shaping the evolution of animals and plants around the world. Especially in urban areas, it is sometimes difficult for species to acquire the necessary resources in order to survive the environment. Therefore they have to adapt their traits to overcome their limitations. 6. Allopatric speciation is when members of the same species are separated by a physical or geographical barrier such as a trench or a river. If the barrier persists and the animals cannot reunite, then it will likely lead to divergent evolution as the needs of the separated animals are likely to differ. If a population of moose were living in an area when it was torn apart by an earthquake that physically tore the piece of land into different pieces and there was no way for the moose to reunite, then the different groups would have to move on and learn to live in their new habitat. Perhaps the earthquake did not change the environment much, in that case no evolution would occur since nothing changed. However, if one group of moose was swept away in the ocean on an iceberg, there would certainly be new, different challenges to adapt to. This occurred frequently during the ice age, as habitats were rapidly changing and being torn apart (Coyne, 2007). Species had to quickly adapt or they died off. In terms of urban environments the city is full of physical barriers that damages/ruins species habitat or make it harder to acquire their resources. These physical barriers include roads, buildings, traffic and parking lots. They separate populations of the same species which may ultimately lead to allopatric speciation. 7.Summary of any conflict/controversy: Evolution is a hot topic, and many people either deny it has ever happened or believe it to be happening everyday all around us. Around a fifth of American adults reject the idea altogether, and think that life has never evolved. Religion often plays a part in the denialists viewpoint, as some feel that evolution and creationism cannot coexist. Others simply do not believe what they cannot see (Masci, 2019). In other words, many species have been studied and proved that evolution has occurred. For example, us humans have evolved through millions of years. Fifty-five million years ago the first primitive primates evolved, then gorillas, followed by orrorin tugenensis (first species that walked on two legs), then ardipithecus (traits of chimps and gorillas), then the australopithecines, the paranthropus, the homo habilis, then hominids (stone tools), then homo ergaster, then homo erectus was found, then homo heidelbergensis, followed by the neanderthals appear before our very own homo sapiens evolved (Pickrell, 2006). Citations for: paragraph 1: Johnson, Marc T. J. & Munshi-South. “Evolution of Life in Urban Environments”. Science, vol. 358, no. 6363, 2017, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aam8327. Accessed Nov. 30, 2021.

Paragraph 2: Yakub, Mohamed & Tiffin, Peter. “Living in the city: Urban Environments Shape the Evolution of a Native Annual Plant”. Wiley Online Library, vol.23, no. 5, 2016, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.13528. Accessed Nov. 30, 2021. Paragraph 3: Schell, Christopher J., Dyson, Karen, Fuentes, Tracy L., Des Roches, Simone, Harris, Nyeema C., Sterud Miller, Danica, Woelfle-Erskine, Cleo A. & Lambert, Max R. “The Ecological Consequences of Systemic Racism in Urban Environments”. Science, vol.369, no, 6510, 2020, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay4497. Accessed Nov. 30, 2021.

Paragraph 4: Witt, Kelsey E., and Emilia Huerta-Sánchez. "Convergent evolution in human and domesticate adaptation to high-altitude environments." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 374.1777 (2019): 20180235. Crespi, Bernard J. "The Convergent and Divergent Evolution of Social-Behavioral Economics."Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 39, 2016, pp. 60. ProQuest, https://qe2a-proxy.mun.ca/login?url?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/convergent-divergent-evolution-social-behavioral/docview/1899327468/se-2?accountid=12378, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15001028. Kratochvíl, Lukáš, Tony Gamble, and Michail Rovatsos. "Sex chromosome evolution among amniotes: is the origin of sex chromosomes non-random?." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376.1833 (2021): 20200108. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.19.21253391v1.full Paragraph 5: Gautam P. (2020) Divergent Evolution. In: Vonk J., Shackelford T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_501-1 Paragraph 6: Coyne, Jerry A. "Sympatric speciation." Current Biology 17.18 (2007): R787-R788. Bournemouth University. "Evolution and the ice age." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 February 2013. . Paragraph7: Masci, David. “Darwin in America.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, 6 Feb. 2019, www.pewforum.org/essay/darwin-in-america. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9989-timeline-human-evolution/