Can I expect any change in muscle tone or mass by bicycling?

GoalWeight168by2021

I am tracking my calories and working on dropping weight.
But for fun, I ride my bike on trails for about an hour a night. It's not a leisurely pace, I am working pretty hard when I go.
Can I expect improvement to quads, glutes as a result? Is it enough of an exercise that I could expect some muscle tone or muscle mass improvement?
Thanks everyone! I love the advice here!

heybales

Depends on how much you have now.

If already doing hard rides for course available - you must have some muscle already.
It will just be improved for using aerobically as you go faster. Faster doesn't require more muscle.

About the only way to gain muscle doing cardio is either at very start having done little to none and more is required merely to carry weight, or do true HIIT (not the faddish term slapped on all manner of workouts today) that overloads the muscles for intensity.
After 5 min warmup - 15 to 45 sec max intensity, then 3 x as long for recovery, 10 sets. (shorter at start, you want the last set really pushing as hard as the 1st set almost)
But compared to lifting it's a very low overload.

You could change course to have more hills to have an opportunity to overload - but then you have to push it on several hills with recovery before the next one - and recovery the day after (just like lifting) if it was a good overload.

sijomial

Depends on where you are now and how much stress you are giving your muscles compared to your current capabilities.

I saw decent growth early on going from very little cycling and at a mostly moderate pace to bigger volume and higher intensity.
But then didn't really see any noticeable growth in quads despite volume going up markedly to several thousand miles a year but calf muscles did grow during this time. Never quite sure what people mean by "muscle tone" but if you mean muscle definition then yes, a lot more definition.
Upped the intensity (speed increase, more extreme hills, more focussed winter indoor bike training and saw growth in quads and glutes as my power went up.

During lockdown when the weather was great and I had time on my hands I hit new volume levels (biggest month was 43 hours and 662 miles) and increasing hill work resulted in noticeable quad growth again. I have always been a good responder to volume BTW.

Growth is of a much smaller scale compared to strength training in the gym of course.
My cycling is performance oriented but you can do drills (or just hills!) on the bike if you want to increase the hypertrophy response if that's your goal.

GoalWeight168by2021

Thanks @heybales and @sijomial! Both of your answers were very helpful!