Applications are being accepted for a working group called the Evolutionary Biology of the Built Environment, according to Your Wild Life, an ecological website hosted by North Carolina State University.

The project leaders say they will select about 30 scholars from the applicant pool to meet in Durham, North Carolina this year from June 10th through the 14th, and develop a series of general audience and peer-reviewed publications about the evolutionary biology of the built environment, which includes houses, backyards, and cities.

Specifically, they'll work on developing a "framework for a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of the species we most intimately interact with, particularly in the context of considering how to build and design our environments so as to favor beneficial (rather than dangerous) evolutionary trajectories."

They'll also try to understand "how to prevent the extinction of beneficial species and to favor the evolution of lineages and species with beneficial attributes, whether those be ecological functions, health benefits or simply aesthetic value," the website says.

Applications are welcome from folks representing an array of disciplines including the 'organismal-ologies', engineering, architecture, anthropology, evolution, genetics, bioinformatics, art, and design.

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Buildings Have Biology Too