The city and forest bird flock together in a common garden: Genetic and environmental effects drive urban phenotypic divergence

Urban phenotypic divergences are documented across diverse taxa, but the underlying genetic and environmental drivers behind these phenotypic changes are unknown in most wild urban systems. We conduct a common garden experiment using great tit (Parus major) eggs collected along an urbanization gradient to: 1) determine whether documented morphological, physiological, and behavioural shifts in wild urban great tits are maintained in birds from urban and forest origins reared in a common garden (N = 73) and 2) evaluate how different sources of genetic, early maternal investment, and later environmental variation contributed to trait variation in the experiment. In line with the phenotypic divergence in the wild, common garden birds from urban origins had faster breath rates (i.e., higher stress response) and were smaller than birds from forest origins, while wild differences in aggression and exploration were not maintained in the experiment. Differences between individuals (genetic and e..., Dataset collected from common garden experiment, and complemented by data collected as a part of long-term monitoring program of great tits in and around Montpellier, France. , , # Data from: The city and forest bird flock together in a common garden: Genetic and environmental effects drive urban phenotypic divergence

Evolution 2025: [https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpaf028](https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpaf028)

By Thompson, M.J., Réale, D., Chenet, B., Delaitre, S., Fargevieille, A., Romans, M., Caro, S.P., & Charmantier, A.

## Overview of the data and file structure

Data list
1.\"ThompsonEA_CGdata.csv\"
2.\"CG_GRM.csv\"
3.\"ThompsonEA_CGegg.csv\"
4.\"ThompsonEA_WILDdata(1).csv\"
5.\"ThompsonEA_WILDdata(2).csv\"

Model objects (3 per trait in common garden and 1 per trait in wild context)
6\. \"modeltars_nogrm_pub.rds\"
7\. \"modeltars_isa_nogrm_pub.rds\"
8\. \"modeltars_grm_pub.rds\"
9\. \"modelmass_nogrm_pub.rds\"
10\. \"modelmass_isa_nogrm_pub.rds\"
11\. \"modelmass_grm_pub.rds\"
12\. \"modelBRI_nogrm_pub.rds\"
13\. \"modelBRI_isa_nogrm_pub.rds\"
14\. \"modelBRI_grm_pub.rds\"
15\. \"modelagg_nogrm_pub.rds\"
16\. \"modelagg_isa_nogrm_pub.rds\"
17\. \"modelagg_grm_pub.rds\"
18\. \"modelexp...