Natural History

Posted in wolves | Tagged Algonquin Park wolves, black bear, fisher, Moose | 4 Comments

4 Responses

1. on December 18, 2018 at 10:07 pm Alex

   I respect and find intriguing the hypothesis arguing for a relatively recent latrans-lupus divergence, and its collorary—that the eastern wolf and red wolf are not distinct species, but rather constitute hybrid swarms with varying amounts of coyote-gray wolf ancestry.

   However, for a variety for reasons, I am more convinced by the competing hypothesis, which holds that there be four indigenous and distinct New World species of canis—lycaon, latrans, Rufus, and lupus, the former three being more closely-related to each other than the last—all of which can theoretically hybridize with one another, but, due to competitive exclusion/antagonism, as well as enormous size differences (western coyotes are roughly 1/4 the weight of western Canadian gray wolves[!!!]), only hybridize directly with the species closer in size (though an eastern wolf x coyote hybrid sould hybridize with an eastern wolf x gray wolf hybrid).

   From my somewhat layman’s understanding, the genetic research is potentially somewhat ambiguous—when the propontents of just two canis species published their findings indicating the split of latrans-lupus occurred at most ~108,000 years ago, their academic rivals (the four-New-World-canis-crew) questioned their findings, and published new, contradictory data; which was shortly thereafter challenged by the just-latrans-&-lupus club…

   Like the song that never ends hehe

   ANYWAY…hehe…why are you a member of the just-latrans-&-lupus club?

   
   
   • on December 19, 2018 at 3:59 pm retrieverman

     I’m even more radical than that. I’m just lupus, with the coyote being a divergent form of lupus.

     I find the genome-wide data pretty convincing, and I also find that the recent divergence to be even more problematic for there to be multiple species of Canis in North America.

     If we are willing to say pugs are part of Canis lupus, then why not coyotes?

     
     
   • on December 19, 2018 at 4:03 pm retrieverman

     I think you’re talking about Hohenlohe paper, which critiqued the Cahill/vonHoldt paper linked to in the post. The Hohenlohe paper got a lot of billing, but the response back didn’t. I don’t think they have anything, and they still have no answer to the recent divergence, which is based upon genome comparisons and not mtDNA or limited genetic sampling:

     https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317716687_Response_to_Hohenlohe_et_al

     
     
   • on December 19, 2018 at 4:05 pm retrieverman

     https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317716687_Response_to_Hohenlohe_et_al

     The most important part of this paper is where they discuss that coyotes, admixed wolf/coyotes, and gray wolves are roughly genetically equivalent of people with divergent genetic histories on different continents. No one calls human groupings different species, unless they belong to certain far right parties.

     
     

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