The Friction Model - Overlaps Between Urbanization and Domestication

Join us for "The Friction Model - Overlaps Between Urbanization and Domestication," presented by Raffaela Lesch, assistant professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Domestication has long fascinated biologists for its ability to produce predictable shifts in behavior, morphology, and physiology across species. The Neural Crest Domestication Syndrome (NCDS) hypothesis offers a unifying developmental explanation, proposing that selection for tameness reduces neural crest cell (NCC) migration and proliferation, leading to the suite of traits observed in domestic animals.

In this talk, Lesch explores whether urbanization, an increasingly relevant human-
mediated environment can induce similar trait shifts in wild species. Lesch will present evidence from three lines of research: anatomical comparisons between wolves and domestic dogs that reveal reduced neural crest-derived laryngeal structures in dogs; theoretical framework analyses linking changes in vocal output across domesticates to NCC-derived systems; and morphometric data showing craniofacial changes in urban mammals consistent with early domestication phenotypes. Urban environments may serve as selective landscapes that mirror the early pressures of domestication, opening new avenues for studying early-stage domestication events.