Menno Schilthuizen (1965) is a professor of evolution and biodiversity at Leiden University and a senior researcher at the National Natural History Museum ‘Naturalis’ in Leiden, the Netherlands.

He studies the processes by which urbanization promotes rapid evolution in wild organisms. He also runs the Taxon Foundation, a nonprofit for urban biodiversity studies.

In his recent books, Darwin Comes to Town (Picador, 2018) and The Urban Naturalist (MIT Press, 2025) he offers a new and optimistic view of cities as places where exciting ecosystems are arising, with community science as a way for city dwellers to be explorers of their own urban neighborhoods.