Natural History

North America has two species of lynx, the widespread bobcat (Lynx rufus) and the boreal-adapted Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis). The two species do have some range overlap across the northern-tier of states, and when Canada lynx ranged down the Appalachians, their range overlapped much more extensively.

These two animals behave quite differently from each other. The bobcat is a generalist predator that hunts everything from mice and voles up to white-tailed deer, while the Canada lynx specializes in hunting snowshoe hares.

The bobcat is found in Mexico and throughout the southeast, especially in Florida.  Those southernmost bobcats are often not much larger than domestic cats, but the biggest bobcats, which are found in the Great Lakes states, are actually larger than Canada lynx.

It is well-known that bobcats and Canada lynx do hybridize. Hybrids have been produced in captivity, and hybrids have been encountered in Maine, New Brunswick, and Minnesota.  These hybrids are apparently fully fertile, which leads to the question of how much the two species really do hybridize.

A group of researchers looked into a big sample of bobcats and Canada lynx that came from across the continent. Of the 2,851 cats sampled, only 7 had any evidence of introgression from one species to the other.

This finding shows that bobcats and Canada lynx do hybridize, but it is virtually unknown in the wild. The authors caution that if Canada lynx numbers ever become low, bobcat introgression could swamp the genetics of that population, effectively making the species disappear through hybridization.

This finding is quite different from what has been discovered with gray wolves and coyotes. Gray wolves and coyotes have apparently exchanged genes across North America, and animals of mixed coyote and gray wolf genetics are pretty common.

Because we don’t have evidence of a hybrid swarm, which we do with wolves and coyotes, we have very good evidence to consider bobcats and Canada lynx quite distinct species.  And conversely, it is within reason to question the validity of coyotes and gray wolves as being distinct species

I would love to see a similar study to the genome comparisons performed on gray wolves, coyotes, and admixed canid populations in North america performed on Canada lynx and bobcats. My guess is that there will be some evidence of very limited hybridization between the two species, but it will not be like coyotes and gray wolves.

We don’t have a good handle on when bobcats and Canada lynx last shared a common ancestor. We need some more genomic data to make this claim, but what we know now is that Canada lynx and modern Eurasian and Iberian lynx are sister taxa.

The bobcat is thought to be more basal to the lineage.  Lynx species have been roaming North America since the Pliocene. Indeed, the earliest lynx fossils were found in North America, not Africa, as we previously believed.

The bobcat evolved in North America. It is the last survivor of the endemic North American lynx that gave rise to the other species in Eurasia, while the Canada lynx came back from that ancestral Eurasian lynx population some 200,000 years ago. 

These animals have likely been distinct from each other for a very long time, but they have not yet lost chemical interfertility. It will likely be a while before this happens, but if climate change continues to threat Canada lynx populations, the bobcat will move north into their range and hybridization could become a threat.

So stay tuned to see what happens, but the genetic data clearly show that bobcats and Canada lynx are two distinct species that do rarely hybridize.