Urban Evolution
Cities fundamentally restructure habitats through increased temperatures, impervious surfaces, and altered resource distributions. These changes generate novel selective pressures that can drive rapid phenotypic divergence.
My work examines how urban environments differ from rural systems in ways that are biologically meaningful for ectotherms, focusing on:
- Spatial variation in thermal environments across urban gradients
- Habitat structure and its effects on microclimate availability
- The role of urban heat islands in shaping selection on physiology and behavior
By quantifying environmental heterogeneity at ecologically relevant scales, I aim to identify the selective landscapes that organisms experience in cities.
Thermal Biology
Temperature is a central axis along which urban environments differ from natural systems. For ectotherms, thermal conditions directly influence behavior, physiology, and performance, making thermal biology a key mechanism linking environment to fitness.
My research investigates:
- Thermoregulatory behavior in heterogeneous urban environments
- Thermal physiology and how it vary across populations
- The extent to which urban individuals exhibit shifts in thermal tolerance or plasticity
This work allows me to test whether urban populations are locally adapted, behaviorally buffered, or physiologically constrained under elevated temperatures.
Reproductive Physiology
While much of urban evolutionary research focuses on survival and morphology, reproduction is a critical and underexplored component of fitness. My work addresses how environmental stressors—particularly temperature—affect reproductive function.
I focus on:
- Sperm performance and tolerance under varying thermal conditions
- Sensitivity of reproductive traits to environmental stress
By incorporating reproductive physiology, I extend urban evolutionary research beyond survival to include mechanisms directly tied to population persistence and evolutionary potential.
“My work integrates urban environmental change with physiological and reproductive traits to understand how organisms evolve under anthropogenic stress.”
Integrative Framework: From Environment to Evolution
A central goal of my research is to integrate across levels of biological organization to understand how environmental change drives evolutionary outcomes.
My work is structured around the following framework:
- Environmental change (urbanization, salinity, thermal heterogeneity)
→ shapes - Organismal responses (behavior, physiology, reproduction)
→ which determine - Performance and fitness
→ ultimately influencing - Evolutionary trajectories
This integrative approach allows me to move beyond descriptive patterns and toward predictive models of how organisms will respond to ongoing environmental change.
Future Directions
Building on this foundation, I aim to expand my future research in, mainly in the following direction:
- Genomic integration
Linking phenotypic variation to underlying genetic architecture .
I am particularly interested in research that integrate:
- Spatial ecology and genomic approaches
Shannan S. Yates 