Heppenheimer Elizabeth, Brzeski Kristin E, Wooten Ron, Waddell William, Rutledge Linda Y, Chamberlain Michael J, Stahler Daniel R, Hinton Joseph W, vonHoldt Bridgett M
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
School of Forest Resources & Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA.
Genes (Basel). 2018 Dec 10;9(12):618. doi: 10.3390/genes9120618.
Rediscovering species once thought to be extinct or on the edge of extinction is rare. Red wolves have been extinct along the American Gulf Coast since 1980, with their last populations found in coastal Louisiana and Texas. We report the rediscovery of red wolf ghost alleles in a canid population on Galveston Island, Texas. We analyzed over 7000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 60 canid representatives from all legally recognized North American species and two phenotypically ambiguous canids from Galveston Island. We found notably high Bayesian cluster assignments of the Galveston canids to captive red wolves with extensive sharing of red wolf private alleles. Today, the only known extant wild red wolves persist in a reintroduced population in North Carolina, which is dwindling amongst political and taxonomic controversy. Our rediscovery of red wolf ancestry after almost 40 years introduces both positive opportunities for additional conservation action and difficult policy challenges.
重新发现曾被认为已灭绝或濒临灭绝的物种是很罕见的。自1980年以来，红狼在美国墨西哥湾沿岸已经灭绝，其最后的种群出现在路易斯安那州和得克萨斯州沿海地区。我们报告了在得克萨斯州加尔维斯顿岛的一个犬科动物种群中重新发现红狼的幽灵等位基因。我们分析了来自所有北美法定认可物种的60只犬科动物代表以及来自加尔维斯顿岛的两只表型模糊的犬科动物的7000多个单核苷酸多态性（SNP）。我们发现加尔维斯顿犬科动物对圈养红狼的贝叶斯聚类分配显著较高，且广泛共享红狼的私有等位基因。如今，唯一已知现存的野生红狼存在于北卡罗来纳州的一个重新引入的种群中，该种群在政治和分类学争议中正在减少。我们在近40年后重新发现红狼的血统，既为进一步的保护行动带来了积极机遇，也带来了棘手的政策挑战。
