I haven't been following this thread but it's my understanding
that the
black eastern squirrel is just a grey squirrel in a different
color
phase..... the farther south one goes the less likely the black
color phase
is to occur... I'm not certain if that's recessive gene stuff
or what.


Yes. That's so. The grays don't like the black squirrels only
because they're "different." So, black ones tend to mate with
black ones, which produces -- black ones (mostly).
Tempermentally, they're the same. (Some folks a while ago tried
to relate the black squirrel coats in the north to the soot
emitted by factory stacks; dark-colored squirrels had better
survival potentials (from hawks and owls, etc) where the tree
trunks were also black from the soot. This works with some
moths, but moth generations tend to occur more rapidly than
squirrels (barely!), so I don't know.)

There are also small clans of pure white eastern squirrels....

Yes. A neighbor has a batch of white squirrels in his yard
(several acres of pines, oaks and pecans). They've been there
for 30 years. There also are piebald squirrels, so his grays
don't seem to have any miscegenation biases.

I have no idea what the evolutionary value of the white squirrel
might be, but since there never are more than a few on his place
and there are gazillions of grays, it probably isn't significant.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Who is VERY
happy to see a recent increase in population of the FOX squirrel
locally!

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