Evolution allows species to adapt to their environment so that the species can fill a niche and live to procreate and continue. Those species that did not evolve fast enough and were unable to change their localized living spaces are no longer with us or are at risk of joining the endangered species list and then perhaps eventual extinction. Let’s look at how humans are changing not only our own environment, but also the environment we share with other species, and how that affects their adaptations and evolutionary process.
There was an interesting article in Science News online recently titled; “Roads Are Driving Rapid Evolutionary Change in Our Environment: Study Explains Why Road Ecology Matters,” posted February 17, 2017 about a Dartmouth College study that stated, “Roads are driving rapid “Evolutionary change in wild plant and animal populations according to a new paper. The study looks at the evolutionary changes that are being caused by the way roads cut through and cut through our plane.”
Among the top four ways our roads interfere with wildlife are:
(1) Run over
(2) Toxic Fumes from Vehicles
(3) Invasive species
(4) Changes in sediments and runoff from water flow
But, to this list I would like to add road noise, which interferes with nature’s hunting and evasion process, and the urban heat island effect. In addition, hunting by humans, easier access to animals that gather near roads to kill, heat or drain water, and poisoning by humans emitting poisons to prevent rodents and gophers burrow under the road or in nearby flood control levees. and infrastructure. So, let’s call these:
(5) Road noise – harder to hear predators or prey
(6) Heating: the roads are hotter
(7) Access to human hunting
(8) Poisoning: rodent control in road ditches, sidewalks, road bases
There are many studies on accidents; one I often like to quote is by Sean Anderson from California Channel Islands State University in CA. One of his graduate students has a thesis of interest; “Web-Based Reporting System for Road Kills” which was an incredibly insightful project on how many animals are killed each year in rural California. Animals that avoid the roads live to procreate, the ones that don’t usually get squashed, providing protein for scavengers who take advantage of this new food supply, sometimes at their own risk.
Those animals that listen to cars, or look closely and react quickly, survive and thrive, procreate and carry on. Nocturnal animals that don’t freeze in car headlights – well, they also live and procreate, those that don’t perish and become road pizza.
There have been many stories of mountain lions being killed on Southern California freeways while trying to cross. You’d think a mountain lion would learn and be agile enough to get out of the way, but that’s not the case, as nothing they’ve found weighs 6,000 pounds. and he chases them at over 60 miles per hour, so they don’t keep an eye out for the cars. Although some of the tagged cougars have routinely crossed highways in California, perhaps they are learning and adapting, teaching their young, perhaps in 20 generations adaptations will begin to appear as they evolve for this new threat?
A recent statistical study showed that the average point in the US is less than 1/2 mile from a paved road. Our wildlife have to adapt or die to cope with these changes in their environment. You can imagine the many ways in which these and other problems are changing their evolutionary adaptation. Pigeons have adapted to living in the city, in parks, along with other species, completely changing the dynamics of their normal evolutionary process, simply because everything we do affects something else. By the way, I am not an ecologist or a defender of wildlife, but no one can deny that what I have said here today is not true.