Grant awarded for the adaptability of plants and animals in the city

Seven new research projects have been awarded a grant from the Academy Institutes Research Fund. One of them is for the NIOO-KNAW/Centre of Excellence for Netherlands Biodiversity Research project 'Linking space to time in ecology: combining ecological research with museum collection analysis to track urban evolution in plants and animals'.

How plants adapt to city enviroments

The NIOO-KNAW project aims to understand how plants and animals adapt to city environments. Cities are unique habitats that are a test case of adaptive capacity in a rapidly changing world. The project links ecological analysis along city-rural-natural gradients to the analysis of herbarium and museum samples, to track urban evolution both in space and in time. This approach, which is executed in collaboration with Naturalis Biodiversity Center and other partners, will be applied to two case studies: environmental adaptation in dandelions and bird responses to pathogens and pollutants.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash