Evolution in the Anthropocene: How Human Actions, Bias, and Individual Behavior Shape Evolution and the Way We Understand It

Abstract

We live, work, and study in the age of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch marked by its most prominent feature: the all-encompassing, global, awe-inspiring impact of human beings (Lewis & Maslin, 2015). In this dissertation, I investigate evolution through the multiple dimensions that define it in this human dominated age: the impacts of uniquely human activities on our planet, the way individuality and plasticity in behavior allows animals to cope with those changes, and how we as both architects of ecological systems and ways of studying, describing, and understanding them influence the very knowledge we generate. I examine these themes through four distinct bodies of work: 1) An exploration of how human attempts to mitigate the impacts of artificial light at night influence a nocturnal insect species 2) Differences in exploratory behavior of female Pacific Field Crickets across populations and time in response to male signal evolution induced by an introduced parasitoid 3) How differences in individual personality among male Pacific Field Crickets may have facilitated the survival and rapid evolution of novel male signals in the face of an introduced parasitoid and 4) How human attitudes about disability shape the way we biologically reason about fitness consequences and how are assumptions are reflected in biological reality.