Sarah Goodyear, writing for the Atlantic Cities:
Seeing the salamanders there, with the subway rumbling past just a few hundred yards away, makes me feel a simple happiness. We have built a city up around them, but the salamanders persist. Now I’ve learned that these tiny, sensitive creatures are even more intriguing than I had realized. According to Jason Munshi-South, an assistant professor of environmental science at New York’s Baruch College, my beloved northern dusky salamanders actually illustrate how evolutionary biology is at work in an urban setting.
Ecologists aren’t the only natural scientists turning their eyes on the city.