Humans are driving the evolution of new species — and that could be just as bad as causing extinctions

The London Underground mosquitoes were first noticed during World War II, when tens of thousands of people took shelter in the subway system's tunnels while their city was bombed. The sunless, concrete passageways were different from the mosquitoes' natural habitat — and their normal food source, the blood of birds, was hard to come by. But there were plenty of humans to bite, and abundant standing water to breed in, so the bugs persisted. After seven decades isolated from the outside world, they developed their own feeding and breeding habits and distinct DNA; they can no longer breed with their aboveground kin. The subterranean mosquitoes, known to science as Culex pipiens molestus, are an entirely new species. And their existence is wholly thanks to humans.-read more