Evolution of the indoor biome NESCent Working Group on the Evolutionary Biology of the Built Environment

Few biologists have studied the evolutionary processesat work in indoor environments. Yet indoor environ-ments compriseapproximately0.5%ofice-freelandarea– an area as large as the subtropical coniferous forestbiome. Here we review the emerging subfield of ‘indoorbiome’ studies. After defining the indoor biome andtracing its deep history, we discuss some of its evolu-tionary dimensions. We restrict our examples to thespecies found in human houses – a subset of the envir-onments constituting the indoor biome – and offer pre-liminary hypotheses to advance the study of indoorevolution. Studies of the indoor biome are situated atthe