Distribution and analysis of colour morphs of the black bear (Ursus americanus )

Records on colour and location of > 40,000 black bears (Ursus americanus ) were gathered from the United States and Canada. The percentage of black individuals in populations decreases from north to south in the Rocky Mountain region and from the Pacific Coast inland. Non-black bears are more common in open forests on the lower slopes of the northern and central Rocky mountains, i the interior mountains of California, and in the desert ranges of the southwestern United States. When the variable subspecies was controlled analytically, both results and interpretation of distributional information suggested that colouration is more cryptic than mimetic in black bears.