Urbanization is changing Earth’s ecosystems by altering the interactions and feedbacks between the fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes that maintain life. Humans in cities alter the eco-evolutionary play by simultaneously changing both the actors and the stage on which the eco-evolutionary play takes place. Urbanization modifies land surfaces, microclimates, habitat connectivity, ecological networks, food webs, species diversity, and species composition. These environmental changes can lead to changes in phenotypic, genetic, and cultural makeup of wild populations that have important consequences for ecosystem function and the essential services that nature provides to human society, such as nutrient cycling, pollination, seed dispersal, food production, and water and air purification. Understanding and monitoring urbanizationinduced evolutionary changes is important to inform strategies to achieve sustainability. In the present article, we propose that understanding these dynamics requires rigorous characterization of urbanizing regions as rapidly evolving, tightly coupled human–natural systems. We explore how the emergent properties of urbanization affect eco-evolutionary dynamics across space and time. We identify five key urban drivers of change—habitat modification, connectivity, heterogeneity, novel disturbances, and biotic interactions—and highlight the direct consequences of urbanization-driven eco-evolutionary change for nature’s contributions to people. Then, we explore five emerging complexities—landscape complexity, urban discontinuities, socio-ecological heterogeneity, cross-scale interactions, legacies and time lags—that need to be tackled in future research. We propose that the evolving metacommunity concept provides a powerful framework to study urban eco-evolutionary dynamics.

中文翻译：

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城市生态演化动力学的复杂性

城市化正在通过改变维持生命的基本生态和进化过程之间的相互作用和反馈来改变地球的生态系统。城市中的人类通过同时改变生态进化剧的演员和舞台来改变生态进化剧。城市化改变了地表、小气候、栖息地连通性、生态网络、食物网、物种多样性和物种组成。这些环境变化会导致野生种群的表型、遗传和文化构成发生变化，从而对生态系统功能和大自然为人类社会提供的基本服务（例如养分循环、授粉、种子传播、粮食生产和水和空气净化。了解和监测城市化引发的进化变化对于为实现可持续性的战略提供信息非常重要。在本文中，我们建议理解这些动态需要将城市化区域严格描述为快速发展的、紧密耦合的人与自然系统。我们探索城市化的新兴特性如何影响跨空间和时间的生态进化动态。我们确定了五个主要的城市变化驱动因素——栖息地改造、连通性、异质性、新干扰和生物相互作用——并强调了城市化驱动的生态进化变化对自然对人类贡献的直接后果。然后，我们探索了五种新兴的复杂性——景观复杂性、城市不连续性、社会生态异质性、跨尺度相互作用、遗留问题和时间滞后——需要在未来的研究中加以解决。我们建议不断发展的元社区概念为研究城市生态进化动态提供了一个强大的框架。