Laboratorium Biologii Antropocenu

Eng. Anthropocene Biology Lab

Description of the Group

How is wildlife changing in the Anthropocene?

The Anthropocene Biology Lab investigates how human-driven environmental change shapes the ecology, evolution and behaviour of wild organisms. We study the biological consequences of urbanisation, climate change, pollution and other anthropogenic transformations, from reproductive strategies and ecological interactions to genetic variation and evolutionary change.

Our research combines long-term field ecology, evolutionary and molecular approaches, iEcology and the synthesis of scientific knowledge. We work across biological and spatial scales, from individuals and populations to cities and global patterns, seeking to understand both the mechanisms underlying wildlife responses to environmental change and their implications for biodiversity conservation.

Based in Central and Eastern Europe, our research also brings a geographical, historical and socio-economic perspective that remains underrepresented in much of urban ecology and evolutionary biology.

Research Activities

A cornerstone of our research is the Warsaw Gradient of Urbanisation, a long-term study established in 2016 with funding from the Polish National Science Centre (NCN). Through approximately 500 nestboxes distributed across eight contrasting study sites, we investigate populations of great tits and blue tits living along a complex urbanisation gradient. This individual-based research allows us to explore how environmental conditions influence reproduction, behaviour, population processes and evolutionary change.

Building on this foundation, our research extends across several interconnected themes:

Urban ecology and evolution: understanding how heterogeneous urban environments shape ecological and evolutionary processes.

Anthropocene genetics: using genetic, genomic and other molecular approaches to investigate adaptation, population structure, reproductive strategies and biological responses to anthropogenic change.

Breeding in the Anthropocene: exploring how urbanisation, climate change and human interventions influence breeding environments and reproductive success.

Wildlife in a world of waste: investigating how animals interact with and incorporate human-made materials into their lives.

Socio-eco-evolutionary dynamics: examining how social, political, economic and historical processes shape urban environments and the wildlife inhabiting them.

Our work integrates primary data collected in the field with digital ecological approaches, comparative research, reviews, books, meta-analyses and large-scale data synthesis. We collaborate across disciplines, including ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, conservation science and the social sciences.

Team Leader

Prof. Marta Szulkin is an evolutionary ecologist and Full Professor at the Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, where she leads the Anthropocene Biology Lab within the Institute of Evolutionary Biology.

She studied biology at the University of Warsaw before completing an MSc and DPhil in evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford, where she subsequently held a Research Fellowship by Examination at Magdalen College. Following a Marie Curie Fellowship at CEFE-CNRS in Montpellier, she returned to Warsaw in 2015 with a Sonata Bis grant awarded by the Polish National Science Centre to start her research on urban biology.

Her research investigates the ecological and evolutionary consequences of human-driven environmental change, with particular emphasis on urban environments. She co-edited Urban Evolutionary Biology (Oxford University Press, 2020), the first academic book dedicated to the field, and received the Prime Minister’s Prize for 2024 for scientific achievements, advancing our understanding of biological and evolutionary processes in urban environments.
Scientific Achievements

Our research has contributed to understanding how urban environments shape wildlife biology and how these effects can be quantified across individuals, populations and landscapes.

One important finding from the Warsaw Gradient of Urbanisation is that increasing impervious surface around breeding sites from 0% to 50% is associated with approximately halving reproductive output in both great tits and blue tits. This result highlights the importance of fine-scale urban habitat structure for wildlife conservation and urban planning.

Our research has also revealed how human interventions can create unexpected ecological consequences. Studies of cavity-nesting birds have shown that artificial nestboxes do not necessarily reproduce the thermal conditions of natural tree cavities, raising important questions about conservation measures under climate change.

Beyond Warsaw, we have contributed to understanding urban evolutionary processes at broader geographical scales, including collaborative research on adaptation in urban environments. We have also used iEcology to uncover previously underappreciated wildlife responses to anthropogenic materials, including the global occurrence of terrestrial hermit crabs using artificial objects as shells.

Together, these findings demonstrate the value of combining detailed, long-term biological observations with molecular, interdisciplinary and large-scale approaches. Our overarching aim is to advance fundamental understanding of life in the Anthropocene while generating knowledge relevant to biodiversity conservation in an increasingly human-modified world.