get involved

By engaging with the SquirrelMapper project you can contribute to an important scientific discovery about evolution in action in our own backyards. Here are three ways that ANYONE can participate in the SquirrelMapper project:

Contribute observations of squirrels to the SquirrelMapper project on iNaturalist

Over 160,000 photographs of squirrels have been submitted so far. When you submit an observation, the community of citizen scientists at iNaturalist confirms its identification. Once an observation is confirmed to be an eastern gray squirrel (a research grade observation), we import the photo to our project site at Zooniverse for you to classify by its coat color.

Classify the coat color of squirrels at the SquirrelMapper project on Zooniverse

The coat color of each squirrel is confirmed through classifications by at least 10 volunteers at Zooniverse. Once the color of a squirrel is classified, we map it, identify its habitat, and determine which morph occurs more often where. This lets us understand how quickly squirrels, and mammals like them, can adapt to changes in their habitats.

Measure natural selection on squirrel coloration by playing our SquirrelSpotter game

In this game you will search for squirrels in scenes of old growth forests, secondary forests, and roads, and we measure how long it takes you to find gray and black squirrels in each scene. By participating in the game you will directly measure the selection pressures on black and gray squirrels in each environment.