ArticleScientific reports2022
Parallel evolution of urban-rural clines in melanism in a widespread mammal.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- Fine-scale spatial variation in eastern grey squirrel melanism across a complex urban landscape.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Citizen scientists reliably count endangered Galápagos marine iguanas from drone images.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Road Mortality Contributes to the Evolution of an Urban-Rural Cline in Squirrel Coat Color.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Global research trends on melasma: a bibliometric and visualized study from 2014 to 2023.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Review
- Seasonal dynamics in the mammalian microbiome between disparate environments.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Rural selection drives the evolution of an urban-rural cline in coat color in gray squirrels.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Genome-wide parallelism underlies contemporary adaptation in urban lizards.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Geometric Morphometric Assessment of Toe Shape in Forest and Urban Lizards Following Hurricane Disturbances.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Colour scales with climate in North American ratsnakes: a test of the thermal melanism hypothesis using community science images.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Moving past the challenges and misconceptions in urban adaptation research.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Urbanization is the dominant trend of global land use change. The replicated nature of environmental change associated with urbanization should drive parallel evolution, yet insight into the repeatability of evolutionary processes in urban areas has been limited by a lack of multi-city studies. Here we leverage community science data on coat color in > 60,000 eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) across 43 North American cities to test for parallel clines in melanism, a genetically based trait associated with thermoregulation and crypsis. We show the prevalence of melanism was positively associated with urbanization as measured by impervious cover. Urban-rural clines in melanism were strongest in the largest cities with extensive forest cover and weakest or absent in cities with warmer winter temperatures, where thermal selection likely limits the prevalence of melanism. Our results suggest that novel traits can evolve in a highly repeatable manner among urban areas, modified by factors intrinsic to individual cities, including their size, land cover, and climate.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.