Imprints of racism Cities create challenging environments for many nonhuman species, and the presence of nonhumans in cities influences the health and well-being of the humans with which they share the environment. Distinct urban conditions are created by landscape modification, but the history of this transformation is not equal across urban environments. Schell et al. review how systematic racist practices such as residential segregation, enacted in part through redlining, have led to an unequal distribution of “nature” within cities. These inequities continue to play out in both the ecological processes of cites and the welfare of their residents. Science, this issue p. eaay4497 BACKGROUND Human activity and decisions drive all life in cities. Worldwide, cities are characterized by extensive anthropogenic transformation of the landscape, modification of biogeochemical processes, and alteration of biological communities. Underlying all of these characteristics of urban ecosystems is an extraordinary variability in human agency, culture, power, and identity. Though our understanding of cities as ecological systems with distinctive community assemblages and landscape features has broadened considerably, researchers still rarely consider the full range of social drivers that affect landscape heterogeneity. One of the most characteristic attributes of cities is social inequality—specifically the uneven distribution of resources and wealth primarily underpinned by structural racism and classism. Because structural inequalities form the foundation of city infrastructure, urban development, governance, management, and landscape heterogeneity, inequality among humans defines the ecological setting and evolutionary trajectories for all urban organisms. More broadly, systematic inequities have profound impacts on global biological change and biodiversity loss. Many emergent social inequity patterns are principally driven by systemic racism and white supremacy. Hence, centering racial and economic justice in urban biological research and conservation is imperative. Here, we show how social inequalities shape ecological and evolutionary processes in U.S. cities and highlight the need for research that integrates justice perspectives with ecological and evolutionary dynamics. ADVANCES Although a rich literature demonstrates how historical and contemporary inequities emerge and persist in human systems, a transdisciplinary perspective that integrates social and cultural processes into an urban eco-evolutionary framework remains unexplored. In today’s world, humans often shape the ecological conditions that drive patterns of species distribution and evolution. Distinctive urban landscape features—including reduced habitat patch size, novel plant communities, and increased distance among similar patches—affect key ecological processes such as population dynamics, species interactions, and food web structure. Recent research emphasizes that socioeconomic and demographic factors predict within-city variation in diverse environmental conditions. Humans directly control urban plant, animal, and microbe communities. Further, decisions about urban resource management are often dictated by a subset of individuals and institutions with social or economic capital. These decisions can bias the distribution of societal benefits derived from nature. Dominant social groups also enact and enforce policies and societal norms that exacerbate social and environmental inequities. Wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods generally have more green space, more trees, and greater plant diversity than less affluent neighborhoods. In addition, synergies among pollution (e.g., light, noise, chemical), resource distribution, subsidized predators, and non-native species present novel challenges to organisms, which must respond by moving elsewhere, acclimatizing, adapting, or facing local extirpation. These stressors are often stratified according to racial and/or ethnic backgrounds and wealth. Further, intraspecific variation in phenotypic and genotypic traits of urban species may reflect human-induced disturbances. These relationships highlight the potential for both adaptive and neutral evolutionary processes in urban subpopulations to vary across neighborhoods within cities. OUTLOOK Stratification of wealth and property ownership shapes the distribution and management of urban spaces, thus constructing the urban ecosystem. Systemic racism and classism drive urban wealth stratification, emphasizing the need to address inequality-driven environmental heterogeneity in urban ecological and evolutionary studies. Residential segregation and colonial annexation (as well as gentrification and displacement) generate predictable ecological patterns in vegetation, air and water quality, microclimate, soils, and the built environment through the rapid influx of resources to specific areas. Accounting for such processes will allow more accurate estimation of the effect of humans on urban organisms. Deconstructing the complex and nuanced attributes of social inequality in affecting biological phenomena can also inform more equitable and sustainable urban planning solutions that implement anti-racist and justice-centered actions. Racial oppression and economic injustice are jeopardizing urban and global ecosystem health and function. Structural racism and classism are further layered with other inequalities, thus necessitating an intersectional approach to urban ecology. Deeper integration across the natural and social sciences is therefore an urgent priority for advancing our understanding of urban ecosystems and developing applied solutions that promote environmental justice, equity, and sustainability. Residential segregation and systemic racism have substantial impacts on ecological and evolutionary dynamics in cities. Government-sponsored policies stratify neighborhoods on the basis of race and class (e.g., through “redlining” in the United States, represented here by the red circle), which results in restricted access to social services and environmental amenities for racial and/or ethnic minorities and low-income communities (red arrows). Habitat quantity and quality tend to be greater in wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods (green arrows), which leads to variations in ecological and evolutionary processes, underscoring the influence of systemic racism and inequality in driving urban landscape characteristics. Urban areas are dynamic ecological systems defined by interdependent biological, physical, and social components. The emergent structure and heterogeneity of urban landscapes drives biotic outcomes in these areas, and such spatial patterns are often attributed to the unequal stratification of wealth and power in human societies. Despite these patterns, few studies have effectively considered structural inequalities as drivers of ecological and evolutionary outcomes and have instead focused on indicator variables such as neighborhood wealth. In this analysis, we explicitly integrate ecology, evolution, and social processes to emphasize the relationships that bind social inequities—specifically racism—and biological change in urbanized landscapes. We draw on existing research to link racist practices, including residential segregation, to the heterogeneous patterns of flora and fauna observed by urban ecologists. In the future, urban ecology and evolution researchers must consider how systems of racial oppression affect the environmental factors that drive biological change in cities. Conceptual integration of the social and ecological sciences has amassed considerable scholarship in urban ecology over the past few decades, providing a solid foundation for incorporating environmental justice scholarship into urban ecological and evolutionary research. Such an undertaking is necessary to deconstruct urbanization’s biophysical patterns and processes, inform equitable and anti-racist initiatives promoting justice in urban conservation, and strengthen community resilience to global environmental change.

中文翻译：

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城市环境中系统性种族主义的生态和进化后果

种族主义的印记 城市为许多非人类物种创造了具有挑战性的环境，城市中非人类物种的存在会影响与他们共享环境的人类的健康和福祉。景观改造创造了不同的城市条件，但这种转变的历史在城市环境中并不相同。谢尔等人。审查系统性的种族主义做法，例如部分通过红线制定的居住隔离，如何导致城市内“自然”的分配不均。这些不平等继续在城市的生态过程和居民的福利中发挥作用。科学，这个问题 p。eaay4497 背景 人类活动和决策驱动着城市的所有生活。在世界范围内，城市的特点是广泛的人为景观改造，生物地球化学过程的改变和生物群落的改变。城市生态系统所有这些特征的基础是人类能动性、文化、权力和身份的非凡可变性。尽管我们对城市作为具有独特社区组合和景观特征的生态系统的理解已大大拓宽，但研究人员仍然很少考虑影响景观异质性的所有社会驱动因素。城市最典型的特征之一是社会不平等——特别是主要由结构性种族主义和阶级主义支撑的资源和财富分配不均。因为结构性不平等构成了城市基础设施、城市发展、治理、管理和景观异质性的基础，人类之间的不平等决定了所有城市生物的生态环境和进化轨迹。更广泛地说，系统性不平等对全球生物变化和生物多样性丧失具有深远的影响。许多新出现的社会不平等模式主要是由系统性种族主义和白人至上主义驱动的。因此，在城市生物研究和保护中以种族和经济正义为中心势在必行。在这里，我们展示了社会不平等如何塑造美国城市的生态和进化过程，并强调将正义观点与生态和进化动态相结合的研究的必要性。进展 尽管丰富的文献展示了历史和当代的不平等如何在人类系统中出现并持续存在，将社会和文化过程整合到城市生态进化框架中的跨学科视角仍未得到探索。在当今世界，人类经常塑造驱动物种分布和进化模式的生态条件。独特的城市景观特征——包括栖息地斑块大小的减少、新的植物群落和相似斑块之间距离的增加——影响关键的生态过程，如种群动态、物种相互作用和食物网结构。最近的研究强调，社会经济和人口因素可以预测不同环境条件下的城市内部变化。人类直接控制城市植物、动物和微生物群落。更多，有关城市资源管理的决策通常由拥有社会或经济资本的一部分个人和机构决定。这些决定可能会使源自自然的社会利益的分配产生偏差。主导社会团体还制定和执行加剧社会和环境不平等的政策和社会规范。较富裕且以白人为主的社区通常比不太富裕的社区拥有更多的绿地、更多的树木和更多的植物多样性。此外，污染（例如，光、噪音、化学物质）、资源分布、受补贴的捕食者和非本地物种之间的协同作用给生物体带来了新的挑战，生物体必须通过迁移到别处、适应环境、适应或面临当地灭绝来做出反应。这些压力源通常根据种族和/或民族背景和财富进行分层。此外，城市物种表型和基因型特征的种内变异可能反映了人为干扰。这些关系突出了城市亚群中适应性和中性进化过程在城市内不同社区之间变化的潜力。前景财富和财产所有权的分层塑造了城市空间的分布和管理，从而构建了城市生态系统。系统性种族主义和阶级主义推动了城市财富分层，强调需要在城市生态和进化研究中解决不平等驱动的环境异质性。住宅隔离和殖民吞并（以及高档化和流离失所）通过资源快速流入特定地区，在植被、空气和水质、小气候、土壤和建筑环境方面产生可预测的生态模式。考虑到这些过程将允许更准确地估计人类对城市有机体的影响。解构影响生物现象的社会不平等的复杂而微妙的属性，也可以为实施反种族主义和以正义为中心的行动提供更公平和可持续的城市规划解决方案。种族压迫和经济不公正在危害城市和全球生态系统的健康和功能。结构性种族主义和阶级主义与其他不平等进一步分层，因此需要对城市生态采取交叉方法。因此，深入整合自然科学和社会科学是推进我们对城市生态系统的理解和开发促进环境正义、公平和可持续性的应用解决方案的当务之急。居住隔离和系统性种族主义对城市的生态和进化动态产生重大影响。政府支持的政策根据种族和阶级对社区进行分层（例如，通过美国的“红线”，这里用红色圆圈表示），这导致种族和/或民族获得社会服务和环境便利的机会受到限制少数民族和低收入社区（红色箭头）。在富裕且以白人为主的社区（绿色箭头）中，栖息地的数量和质量往往更大，这导致生态和进化过程的变化，强调了系统性种族主义和不平等在驱动城市景观特征方面的影响。城市地区是由相互依存的生物、物理和社会组成部分定义的动态生态系统。城市景观的新兴结构和异质性推动了这些地区的生物成果，而这种空间格局往往归因于人类社会财富和权力的不平等分层。尽管存在这些模式，但很少有研究有效地将结构性不平等视为生态和进化结果的驱动因素，而是将重点放在诸如邻里财富等指标变量上。在这个分析中，我们明确地整合了生态、进化和社会过程，以强调将社会不平等（特别是种族主义）与城市化景观中的生物变化联系起来的关系。我们利用现有研究将种族主义做法（包括居住隔离）与城市生态学家观察到的动植物的异质模式联系起来。未来，城市生态学和进化研究人员必须考虑种族压迫系统如何影响驱动城市生物变化的环境因素。在过去的几十年里，社会科学和生态科学的概念整合在城市生态学领域积累了大量学术成果，为将环境正义学术成果纳入城市生态和进化研究提供了坚实的基础。