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Like many highly variable human traits, more than a dozen genes are known to contribute to the full range of skin color. However, the historical bias in favor of genetic studies in European and European‐derived populations has blinded us to the magnitude of pigmentation's complexity. As deliberate efforts are being made to better characterize diverse global populations and new sequencing technologies, better measurement tools, functional assessments, predictive modeling, and ancient DNA analyses become more widely accessible, we are beginning to appreciate how limited our understanding of the genetic bases of human skin color have been. Novel variants in genes not previously linked to pigmentation have been identified and evidence is mounting that there are hundreds more variants yet to be found. Even for genes that have been exhaustively characterized in European populations like MC1R, OCA2, and SLC24A5, research in previously understudied groups is leading to a new appreciation of the degree to which genetic diversity, epistatic interactions, pleiotropy, admixture, global and local adaptation, and cultural practices operate in population‐specific ways to shape the genetic architecture of skin color. Furthermore, we are coming to terms with how factors like tanning response and barrier function may also have influenced selection on skin throughout human history. By examining how our knowledge of pigmentation genetics has shifted in the last decade, we can better appreciate how far we have come in understanding human diversity and the still long road ahead for understanding many complex human traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population-scale molecular studies of endangered and cryptic species are often limited by access to high-quality samples. The use of noninvasively collected samples or museum-preserved specimens reduces the pressure on modern populations by removing the need to capture and handle live animals. However, endogenous DNA content in such samples is low, making shotgun sequencing a financially prohibitive approach. Here, we apply a target enrichment method to retrieve mitochondrial genomes from 65 museum specimens and 56 noninvasively collected faecal samples of two endangered great ape species, Grauer's gorilla and the eastern chimpanzee. We show that the applied method is suitable for a wide range of sample types that differ in endogenous DNA content, increasing the proportion of target reads to over 300-fold. By systematically evaluating biases introduced during target enrichment of pooled museum samples, we show that capture is less efficient for fragments shorter or longer than the baits, that the proportion of human contaminating reads increases postcapture although capture efficiency is lower for human compared to gorilla fragments with a gorilla-generated bait, and that the rate of jumping PCR is considerable, but can be controlled for with a double-barcoding approach. We succeed in capturing complete mitochondrial genomes from faecal samples, but observe reduced capture efficiency as sequence divergence increases between the bait and target species. As previously shown for museum specimens, we demonstrate here that mitochondrial genome capture from field-collected faecal samples is a robust and reliable approach for population-wide studies of nonmodel organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]