Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Published November 14, 2018 17:01 ET (Brief from the Royal Society)
Humans have altered the course of species evolution across the planet. The direction and magnitude of selection has changed to favour organisms that best tolerate human-caused development, harvesting, species introductions, and environmental changes. Species that are large-bodied, specialist, or otherwise vulnerable to human activities disproportionately lost to extinction. Humans have also altered the processes generating new species, which also differentially affects species. Anthropogenic changes to evolution are unprecedented for a single species in a single century.
Lead author: Sarah Otto, University of British Columbia – otto@zoology.ubc.ca
