A Coat of Many Colors

Explore Evolution in Action With Squirrel Mapper Citizen Science Squirrel Mapper is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded citizen science project associated with the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) and the Department of Biology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Changes in the environment such as temperature, decreases in old-growth forests, increases in urbanization, hybridization with other squirrels, and predation pressure are some of the factors contributing to the coat color changes observed. Educators may be interested in having students explore scientific literature on coat color genetics, as this provides an extension to the Squirrel Mapper project (See "Additional Resource" for an example). Because squirrels are so engaging to observe, your students may be interested in additional squirrel citizen science projects.