Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
Michigan Technological University, College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Houghton, MI.
J Hered. 2020 May 20;111(3):277-286. doi: 10.1093/jhered/esaa006.
The red wolf (Canis rufus), a legally recognized and critically endangered wolf, is known to interbreed with coyotes (Canis latrans). Declared extirpated in the wild in 1980, red wolves were reintroduced to northeastern North Carolina nearly a decade later. Interbreeding with coyotes was thought to be restricted to a narrow geographic region adjacent to the reintroduced population and largely believed to threaten red wolf recovery. However, red wolf ancestry was recently discovered in canids along the American Gulf Coast, igniting a broader survey of ancestry in southeastern canid populations. Here, we examine geographic and temporal patterns of genome-wide red wolf ancestry in 260 canids across the southeastern United States at over 164 000 SNP loci. We found that red wolf ancestry was most prevalent in canids sampled from Texas in the mid-1970s, although non-trivial amounts of red wolf ancestry persist in this region today. Further, red wolf ancestry was also observed in a subset of coyotes inhabiting North Carolina, despite management efforts to limit the occurrence of hybridization events. Lastly, we found no evidence of substantial red wolf ancestry in southeastern canids outside of these 2 admixture zones. Overall, this study provides a genome-wide survey of red wolf ancestry in canids across the southeastern United States, which may ultimately inform future red wolf restoration efforts.
红狼（Canis rufus）是一种法律认可的、濒危的狼种，已知与郊狼（Canis latrans）杂交。1980 年，红狼在野外被宣布灭绝，近十年后才被重新引入北卡罗来纳州东北部。杂交被认为仅限于与重新引入的种群相邻的狭窄地理区域，并且被广泛认为威胁到红狼的恢复。然而，最近在美洲海湾沿岸的犬科动物中发现了红狼的祖先，这引发了对东南犬科动物种群祖先的更广泛调查。在这里，我们在 164000 多个 SNP 位点上检查了美国东南部 260 只犬科动物的全基因组范围内的红狼祖先的地理和时间模式。我们发现，红狼祖先在 20 世纪 70 年代中期从德克萨斯州采集的犬科动物中最为普遍，尽管今天该地区仍存在大量的红狼祖先。此外，尽管有管理措施限制杂交事件的发生，但在北卡罗来纳州的一些郊狼中也观察到了红狼祖先。最后，我们没有在这两个混合区之外的东南犬科动物中发现大量的红狼祖先。总的来说，这项研究提供了对美国东南部犬科动物中红狼祖先的全基因组调查，这可能最终为未来的红狼恢复工作提供信息。
