2.1 Description of the initial content on the website

The Urban Evolutionary Ecology tools website (Figure 1; https://www.urbanevoecotools.org/index.html) will initially have nine pages: a home page with an interactive and co-created map, a general “about” page, a page to acknowledge content contributors, a contact us page, and individual pages for each toolkit in relation to urban evolutionary ecology research: (i) decolonizing urban eco-evo research, (ii) finding and fostering international collaborative partnerships, (iii) common methods and datasets for urban trait mapping, (iv) common methods for cross-city trait mapping, and (v) best practices for public outreach and communication. Each page is expanded upon in the appropriate section below. The website also includes opportunities to contribute to the toolkits and an interactive map. The website was built using Weebly, an eCommerce company that is owned by Square, and the domain name was purchased through GoDaddy.

2.2 Accessibility and contributions

This website is freely available to anyone who has internet access. We have designed it to be streamlined, minimizing the need for extensive bandwidth or data usage. We used DeepL (https://www.deepl.com/) for the initial translation of the website content into Spanish and then had individuals who are fluent in Spanish review the translations. We plan to, in addition, translate the website to include the 10 most common languages spoken in the world (Beytía et al., 2022): English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, standard Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, and Indonesian.

This website is a living resource that will continue to expand and adapt to enhance international collaborations on urban evolutionary ecological research. To accomplish this goal, we have developed forms that will enable individuals to contribute and expand the toolkits (Appendices S1–S4). Individuals are asked which toolkit they are contributing to (including an option for additional toolkits), what the contribution is, and their contact information. Contact information will be made available on the website only if the individual grants permission. We invite researchers outside of the current list of contributors to contribute resources and dialog about this resource.

2.3 Methods for mapping and community contributions

The website includes an interactive map called MURP (Mapping Urban Researchers and Projects; Figure 2) that crosses multiple toolkits and is co-created by users. MURP is a Google Map that is populated with data independently written by contributors in the fields of urban ecology and science communication. This site has the potential to grow and invite researchers from a variety of disciplines to participate in this field of knowledge. Specifically, we developed simple Google Forms for (1) researchers in the field of urban evolutionary ecology, (2) urban evolutionary ecology research projects, and (3) science communicators (Appendices S1–S3). These forms ask users to fill in the decimal latitude and longitude of their locations (institutes, field sites, cities, etc.), so they can be visually represented on the map. The map will be regularly updated.

2.4 Updating and archiving

We will update the website and the MURP using data from submitted Google forms, with periodical quality checks. We will regularly archive html and pdf versions of the website and CSV versions of the data from our forms (Appendices S1–S4) on Github (https://github.com/photopidge/Urban-Evolutionary-Ecology-Toolkit) to maintain the public accessibility of toolkit information over time.

3.1 Decolonizing urban evolutionary ecology research

In urban systems, it is particularly important to recognize that colonialism and imperialism were major drivers in the development of urban industrial capitalism and the formation of many cities. From 1500 to 1950 nearly every region in the world's economy was at one time controlled by a European core power (King, 1990). Even with re-independence and new global cities, a need remains to understand contemporary urbanism by investigating its colonial past. Similarly, the development of sciences, including ecology and evolution, has been shaped by historical colonialism.

In the interest of more just science, we must acknowledge how ongoing colonial contexts influence the funding, creation, implications, and dissemination of scientific thought at both local and global scales (Miriti et al., 2023). Globally, we need to address how we fund science, how we conduct work in areas in which we do not live, and how to equitably and respectfully collect and disseminate information. Locally, we need to address how we conduct research in a respectful and equitable manner, how we can actively engage local communities throughout the entire research process, and how a researcher's positionality influences the way in which they ask questions and analyze data (Baker et al., 2019). In other words, we need to explicitly work toward decolonizing science.

Decolonizing science is the process of explicitly addressing and actively working against the disproportionate legacy of the dominance of Western culture on research and science education and the ways that science is biased by Western thought. Because of this history, science has benefited from and been used to falsely justify Western colonialism and cultural superiority. Furthermore, ecologists and evolutionary biologists have a responsibility to understand the history of our field and how our research is shaped by colonial thought. For example, European ecologists contributed to the domination of colonized lands using ecological concepts to discount Indigenous knowledge systems and justify the exertion of environmental and social control (Baker et al., 2019; Trisos et al., 2021). At the same time, European scientists developed foundational ideas and concepts through the study of these regions (Baker et al., 2019). This racist and colonial history has shaped the fundamental values, terminology, and concepts of ecology and evolution and continues to influence those who study ecological and evolutionary dynamics to this day (Cheng et al., 2023; Miriti et al., 2023).

The paradigms that the ecology and evolution of nonhumans can be understood outside of social context and that human societies can be understood without considering their eco-evolutionary context have recently been challenged (Mackenzie & Jeggo, 2019; Trisos et al., 2021). Moreover, imposing Western research priorities and methods onto local communities in other regions infringes upon local values and knowledge systems, generates uneven power dynamics, and further concentrates the power of those who already have it (Nadasdy, 1999). Furthermore, the propensity for Western scientists to disregard different kinds of knowledge systems, such as traditional ecological knowledge, blocks the potential for increased understanding and functional impact on the systems we study. Addressing these concerns is particularly important in urban systems since many cities around the world were built on Indigenous land, especially those in regions such as the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, where European colonization occurred. Unfortunately, this history is often not part of the scientific framing or study timescale in studies of urban evolutionary ecology.

Thus, a paradigm shift is necessary in the ways that we conduct ecological and evolutionary research (Trisos et al., 2021). Studies and databases should value and include a wider range of information formats and efforts to standardize data should recognize that Western methods are not the most appropriate method of understanding for all communities (Nadasdy, 1999). Furthermore, ownership and sovereignty must be a key consideration in the processes of collecting, storing, and sharing data. While Western-trained scientists often see knowledge as belonging to those who generated it, many Indigenous communities see tribal knowledge as an inherent part of the group's identity and wealth, which even then, might only be held by select members (Harding et al., 2012). As such, western scientists working with people from other cultures must respect their data sovereignty by respecting local ownership and the right to refuse the collection or sharing of information (Trisos et al., 2021). This includes working with Indigenous communities that have been displaced from cities due to colonization. It also includes a recognition that the labor of decolonizing our science needs to be borne primarily by researchers from backgrounds that have historically benefited from colonial systems. While we need to center the experiences of scholars from groups historically and systemically excluded from STEM fields, we need to do so in an equitable manner in which the bulk of the effort is not expended by people from these groups. However, there are multiple systemic barriers to achieving these goals in our current research infrastructure. For example, access to data and scholarly literature remains inequitably distributed, with data extracted from the Global South and hosted in the Global North (Trisos et al., 2021). When possible, promptly uploading data to public archives would increase accessibility for researchers at under-resourced institutions and allow comparisons of ecological and evolutionary phenomena around the globe.

3.2 Finding and fostering international collaborative partnerships for urban evolutionary ecology research

Historically, logistic challenges often caused scientists to focus on a single city or region when studying urban evolutionary ecology. However, researchers who are geographically distant can now connect and work together to facilitate more powerful research outcomes. Identifying colleagues at different global institutions is increasingly important for understanding the similar and different patterns associated with broadly distributed taxa, traits, and processes across different cities and bioregions. This strategy is one of a “division of labor,” where rather than individual laboratories competing for resources and publications, sample and data collection, and analyses, they can be split up among different colleagues depending on how each individual/group can best contribute. Collaborative networks can keep up with emerging methods and technologies and co-develop standards for methods and data collection that ensure that global scientific studies are accessible, while maintaining communication in reducing redundancies and uncertainties in data collection.

International collaborations have been increasing since the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s (Olechnicka et al., 2019; National Science Board [NSB], 2020; Marginson, 2022), yet global collaborations in ecology and evolution still face numerous barriers (e.g., Smith et al., 2023) that have hindered the advancement of interdisciplinary research in urban ecology and evolution (Verrelli et al., 2022; Westman & Broto, 2022). For example, access to research and scientific resources has been a major issue, as researchers from low-income countries often lack the necessary funds to access paid journals or attend international conferences (Petersen, 2021). Moreover, language can be a barrier, as English is often the dominant language in scientific communication (Gordin, 2015) and can limit participation from non-English speaking regions (Ramírez-Castañeda, 2020; Steigerwald et al., 2022; Tardy, 2004). Immigration policies and visa restrictions have created additional obstacles for researchers trying to collaborate across borders (Casanova et al., 2020; Feeney et al., 2023; Trost et al., 2018), particularly in countries where science and academia are seen as potential threats to national security (Cohen & Marquardt, 2019; Lee & Haupt, 2020). Furthermore, parachute science (see introduction; Miller et al., 2023; Stefanoudis et al., 2021), has also been shown to represent a significant barrier to global collaborations (Asase et al., 2022; Genda et al., 2022). Overcoming these and other associated barriers (e.g., discrimination based on different racial, cultural, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, or religious identities) will require a concerted effort to address issues of equity, accessibility, and cultural sensitivity in the global scientific community (Cheng et al., 2023; Cheruvelil et al., 2014; de Grijs, 2015; Ferrini-Mundy, 2013; Harding et al., 2012; Ramírez-Castañeda et al., 2022).

3.3 Common methods and freely available datasets for urban eco-evolutionary trait mapping

Functional traits—physiological, morphological, or phenological characteristics of species (Violle et al., 2007)—can draw direct connections between ecological or evolutionary observations and their underlying processes and inform potential outcomes (Grime, 1974; Jeliazkov et al., 2020; Zakharova et al., 2019). Functional traits can also serve as a common currency to allow direct comparisons across space, time, and biological taxa (Zakharova et al., 2019), and increase the resulting sample size by sampling effort. Trait-based research thus has been widely used to explain biodiversity patterns, assess ecological functions and ecosystem services, and provide decision-makers with early-warning signals (Jeliazkov et al., 2020; Zakharova et al., 2019). Over the past decades, we have accumulated many measurements of functional traits for the most common taxonomic groups to form global trait databases (Gallagher et al., 2019). However, their applicability to urban studies is limited, as data from existing global species trait databases were largely collected from natural systems. Moreover, many species only have a small number of measures and little information about intraspecies variability. Yet, urbanization can generate novel environmental conditions that can force species to have different, sometimes even extreme, values for important functional traits compared to trait values in natural conditions (Borowy & Swan, 2020; Grilo et al., 2022; Johnson et al., 2018). To better understand the evolutionary ecological consequences of urbanization, urban-associated trait databases are required, and acquiring such data in urban areas poses its own set of challenges (Santos et al., 2023; Winchell et al., 2022). Such databases can be used to more accurately evaluate the urban filtering of individuals and species (Fournier et al., 2020), urban evolution and adaptation (Thompson et al., 2016), urban ecosystem functions and services (Grilo et al., 2022), and urban degradation and resilience (Morelli et al., 2020).

Most published global datasets of species traits (e.g., TRY, BIEN, AVONET) are based largely on measurements from natural ecosystems or mixtures of natural and anthropogenic systems. As far as we know, no coordinated global urban-associated trait datasets exist, though some datasets such as SPI-Birds do have information on whether the data were collected in urban or nonurban areas (Culina et al., 2021). At a local to regional scale, a few such datasets are available, including National Science Foundation (NSF) urban Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites (USA; Grimm et al., 2000), PhenObs (mostly Europe; Nordt et al., 2021), as well as those from local studies (Buchholz et al., 2020; Pataki et al., 2013; Philpott et al., 2019; Santangelo et al., 2022; Teixeira et al., 2022). While the methods for gathering trait data are similar across natural and urban sites, urban sites pose additional challenges (Dyson et al., 2019; Thompson et al., 2016; Winchell et al., 2022). Nonetheless, these nonurban trait data will provide critical context to urban studies.

Urban sites are highly variable at very fine spatial and temporal scales, due to the synergistic effects of urban microclimate, pollution, land fragmentation and degradation, and socio-economic conditions and human activities (Buchholz et al., 2020; Johnson & Munshi-South, 2017; Thompson et al., 2016), characteristics that have significant consequences for species traits (Borowy & Swan, 2020; Grilo et al., 2022; Johnson et al., 2018). Controlling for urban heterogeneity might not always be possible or desirable, since sampling in urban areas could involve complex administrative processes or dangerous situations (Dyson et al., 2019; Winchell et al., 2022). When possible, researchers should document the local conditions or sampling location, so that other collaborators or research teams can access relevant biophysical information (Rega-Brodsky et al., 2022). Environmental conditions and species assemblages can be more homogeneous across urban areas than between urban areas and their surroundings (McKinney, 2006). Collaborative projects have capitalized on such homogeneity across urban areas to study global patterns for urban species traits (e.g., Aronson et al., 2016; Santangelo et al., 2022). However, collaborative efforts are still uncommon (see international collaborations and experiment toolkits), with multiple researchers studying the same traits independently across cities (Knapp et al., 2021). Building global urban-associated species trait databases requires global collaborations based on principles of transparency, mutual respect, and equitable input and acknowledgment (Rega-Brodsky et al., 2022). In addition, collaborations can benefit from involving local and/or municipal authorities, NGOs, and community groups, which may already collect species traits and could use the research outcomes to benefit local communities.

3.4 Common methods and freely available datasets for cross-city manipulative experiments and meta-analyses

In the age of digital and online databases, cross-city collaborative research can be globally facilitated through the public sharing of resources and the creative use of online materials collected for initially very different purposes. As emerging technologies have become more affordable, techniques have come with ever-increasing expectations of larger datasets, more samples, and populations, which ironically means these more affordable applications have become even less accessible to many. Making these emerging techniques and data collection more accessible will increase the diversity in the types of questions that can be asked, and make strides toward removing biases and misconceptions in urban evolutionary ecology research (Winchell et al., 2022). In the following toolkit, we identify online initiatives, networks, databases, and strategies for cross-city experiments to create an inclusive environment where all scientists feel they can contribute to and have access to this research.

Cross-city experiments include online databases, techniques, and tools that enable urban data to be comparatively interrogated and analyzed across taxa and communities in other ecosystems. Raw data repositories such as Dryad and DataOne are more than simply data storage, but instead include methods, samples, and analyses, which provide curated and standardized metadata for larger pattern analyses. For example, Miles et al. (2019) used these data to access metadata from 167 global urban studies to show evidence of urban-facilitated gene flow in 33% of the studies, and Schmidt and Garroway (2022) reanalyzed 39 terrestrial vertebrate species datasets across 268 U.S. cities to find evidence of systemic racism leading to reduced urban connectivity; both studies identified patterns not seen in the individual published studies alone. As these databases grow, networks such as the UrbBioNet and Nutrient Network have emerged with foci on standardizing data collection, ethical behavior, and research questions, and that openly invite people to join from anywhere globally to share data and publish collaboratively (Aronson et al., 2017; Hautier et al., 2015). With the advent of remote-sensing technologies, there are also many online sites that make available high-resolution mapping data on light and air pollution, land cover and ecosystem characteristics, surface temperature data, and imperviousness, just to name a few, which enable comparative analyses between urban and non-urban areas across the globe in association with biotic or abiotic factors (Zhao et al., 2022).

There are also a growing number of social media and community science sites, such as iNaturalist and eBird, where pictures and videos collected by anyone can provide vast amounts of data, much of which was not collected with the intent of addressing ecology and evolutionary biology questions. We point to several initiatives, like iEcology (Jarić et al., 2020; see Box 1), that have originated with the intent of building a more inclusive and practical framework, by which to conduct global research using these online media databases and that could easily be applied to urban areas. We believe these combined efforts of collaborative database sharing and social media outreach will prove to be the mitigating tools in increasing the contribution of underrepresented countries and institutions to cross-city experiments that are necessary to our understanding of the global impact of urbanization on eco-evo dynamics.

BOX 1. iEcology as a model online initiative for facilitating cross-city experiments

The iEcology (internet ecology) initiative (Jarić et al., 2020)—born from the vast and ever-increasing online data resources available to all – provides a framework for the highly collaborative use of digital resources. A key point is that unlike other large databases, this framework takes advantage of many social media outlets where the data were not initially collected for ecological analyses. As previously noted, one of the challenges of cross-city experiments is that many individuals use different methods and technologies for collecting data, yet the iEcology approach embraces these unavoidable diverse characteristics. One method is to use social media platforms such as Flickr, news articles, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Google Trends that collect data unknowingly in nature on species distributions, behaviors, and interactions. For example, Jagiello et al. (2019) used data collected via YouTube videos that showed behavioral differences between urban and rural red (Sciurus vulgaris) and gray (Sciurus carolinensis) squirrels across Europe. Møller and Xia (2020) observed video recordings of feeding from the human hand by 36 bird species across Europe to show this behavior is linked to urban habitat. iEcology also welcomes opportunities for community science involvement (Ellwood et al., 2023), making ecological research more inclusive and accessible to the public. Arazmi et al. (2022) used the community science database, eBird, to estimate distribution and occurrence of the invasive species Javan myna (Acridotheres javanicus), showing that it is highly invasive in Malaysia and its abundance is linked to urban area expansion. Jarić et al. (2020) identified future technologies that, through development, would further enhance the framework of iEcology that focuses on tools and online resources, including apps and games, automated content analysis (i.e., automatically identifies content), bioacoustics and ecoacoustics recording and interpretation, blockchain and linked data list development, Internet of Things (i.e., the network of computers and the online community), open source hardware for data collection and storage, and web scraping or the automatic retrieval of online content as data mining (Figure B1). Importantly, although the iEcology has mostly been applied to ecological systems, it has the potential to advance cross-city experiments in evolutionary ecology that fosters equitable collaborations.

3.5 Best practices and freely available resources for public outreach and communication of research findings in urban evolutionary ecology

Effective communication of evolutionary ecology research is especially important in urban systems due to their inherent connection and proximity to the public. Indeed, cities are becoming the spaces where people have their most frequent interactions with nature, molding their understanding and perception of the natural world. As natural areas are transformed by anthropogenic activities, it will also become more important that scientific research on urban organisms, evolution, and ecosystems reaches the target audiences, such as urban planners and decision makers, that can use those data to create implementable actions for sustainable development and conservation.

What effective communication of scientific research looks like depends, in part, on the goals, the intended audience, and the spatial scale (i.e., local or global). Outreach can be active or passive. For example, sidewalk signs can educate the community about urban flora and fauna passively or local coffee shop lectures can engage the community more actively. It can also take several forms: from scientific articles to popular literature, presentations to videos or documentaries, public workshops to community projects.

The communities in which we work have a vested interest in urban outcomes, including scientific research on urban ecology and evolution. As members of local communities, urban researchers often work in close contact with nonscientists, which offers opportunities for this essential community outreach and translation of our science. For example, researchers have designed letters to the community with brief information about their research and come to field sites prepared to answer questions from curious community onlookers (see Dyson et al., 2019). Similarly, some urban researchers distribute stickers to community members while conducting research that features the organisms being studied as a means of introducing the research and the wildlife. Scaling up to a more global audience, there have been a few documentaries that highlight urban evolution. For example, the BBC's Planet Earth series included the urban ecosystem as one of the focus systems and the Smithsonian documentaries “Laws of the Lizard” and “Miami Wild” which featured urban ecology and evolution research.

Another effective mode of scientific communication is connecting with educators to translate research into learning opportunities. Platforms that connect scientists and educators, such as Skype a Scientist (https://www.skypeascientist.com/), are excellent resources for outreach. Successful and long-term partnerships have been forged between scientists and educators, some of which have resulted in the development of a curriculum focused on urban evolutionary ecology (Box 2). In general, the curriculum should be appropriate for the grade level and align with national educational standards. Since scientists do not always know the details of how an educational program can best align to these standards, it is best to collaborate with teachers and co-design a curriculum that is appropriate and engaging for students.

BOX 2. Urban Sci-comm initiatives

Here we highlight two scientific communication initiatives that currently exist as resources for disseminating urban evolutionary ecology research to different audiences.

Scientist to scientist and community: Life in the City

Launched in 2018 by Elizabeth Carlen, Lindsay Miles, and Kristin Winchell, Life in the City (https://urbanevolution-litc.com/) became the first urban evolutionary ecology blog (Figure B2a). Their vision was to unite the urban research community and simultaneously engage the public and scientists alike. The blog is free and publicly available and was intended to create an online community where research and ideas could be openly shared and discussed. The language is written in a way that is accessible to the public, with little scientific jargon included and a glossary with scientific terms defined.

The initial launching of the blog required a concerted effort by the founding editors to co-recruit contributors, reach the intended readership through existing social media networks (primarily Twitter, on which the founding editors had a large following), and develop the base content so that posts would be regular and engaging for the first several months. This strategy brought in many readers and contributors: the site grew to include 36 posts by 13 contributors with more than 3000 views within the first four months. To reach a broader audience, the co-editors also promote the blog at scientific conferences, invited seminars, and workshops, giving out Life in the City stickers and recruiting new collaborators.

Regular posts on Life in the City span a range of content types meant to engage different audiences. For example, one post category, the “urban observation of the week” is a weekly featured urban organisms found in the “wild” to highlight the incredible biodiversity that exists in cities but that often goes unnoticed. Another post category, “research summaries,” provides a short explanation of a recent scientific article, explaining what was done and how, and why the results matter. These research summaries have received praise from educators and students at both K-12 & university levels as a means to make scientific articles more accessible and understandable. The third main type of post is a simple “new literature alert” which shares a recent article abstract and link to the publication, with the main goal of helping the scientific community stay up-to-date on relevant literature. Often researchers who are featured in this type of post become contributors to the blog and write a research summary post.

Life in the City was intended to be an open and inclusive community from the start. The blog editors invite contributors from around the world and share posts on Twitter and Facebook. Contributors include community members (e.g., students from The Bronx High School of Science), undergraduate and graduate students, and both early career and senior researchers. With more than 450 posts written by 92 contributors as of early 2023, Life in the City has reached a global audience, regularly receiving >100 visitors a day. The blog continues to grow and keeps inclusivity at its core, adding new editors, content types, and collaborative efforts with educators. Key challenges for the future will be to diversify content to reach different types of audiences (e.g., video integration) and expand the reach to include non-english language researchers and audiences. An ongoing challenge has been to identify funding sources to maintain the blog, and with plans of expanding future content, additional funding sources will need to be identified.

Scientist to educators & community: Lizard adaptation challenge

As part of Skype-A-Scientist, Ph.D. student Cleo Falvey connected with middle school educators, Jacalyn Fiechter and Maire McCormack. The interaction was so rewarding for everyone involved, that in the following months, they worked together to develop the “Lizard Adaptation Challenge” to teach students about adaptive morphological changes in urban environments. Specifically, students learn about adaptations in lizards, how they relate to habitat use, and the morphological changes that have been documented in urban Anolis lizards (e.g., Falvey et al., 2020; Winchell et al., 2016). Students then research their own chosen species of lizard and think about what adaptations that lizard might have if the lizard were to live in the city, as well as any trade-offs the lizard might need to make to live in its new urbanized habitat. The project culminates in an engaging creative project that involves the construction of a physical lizard model made from recycled materials, as well as a presentation to their class and wider community (Figure B2b).

This educational activity has been delivered to over 200 middle schoolers in a public school in New York City, with a student population largely comprised of students from historically excluded groups in STEM fields. In addition, students who were not directly involved in the project were still able to participate by listening to the presentations and doing “gallery walks” around the room with the models, so more than 500 students had the opportunity to learn about adaptations and urban evolutionary ecology.

Although this project was designed specific to lizard adaptations and created directly with the teachers who were going to implement the curriculum, it could be scalable to any urban species and any grade level. In addition, since the lizards are constructed using recycled materials that the students collect themselves, the costs for running the interactive part of the activity are low. Currently, efforts are underway to publish the curriculum as an open-source activity that can be disseminated on the internet to teachers around the world.