I've got a coyote skull that I found in the wild. For a long time I believed it was a wolf skull until some know-it-all kindly informed me that wolves have been extinct in Texas for a long time. Sure enough, internet skull research revealed the skull I found once belonged to a coyote, not a wolf.
As for wolves being extinct, that's not quite true either. Turns out something was going on under the sheets because red wolf DNA showed up in other wild canines.
DNA of wolf declared extinct in wild lives on in Texas pack:
DALLAS (AP) — Researchers say a pack of wild canines found frolicking near the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast carries a substantial amount of red wolf genes, a surprising discovery because the animal was declared extinct in the wild nearly 40 years ago.
The finding has led wildlife biologists and others to develop a new understanding that the red wolf DNA is remarkably resilient after decades of human hunting, loss of habitat and other factors had led the animal to near decimation.
'Incredibly Rare': Extinct Wolf DNA Turns Up in Texas:
(Newser) – The red wolf was declared effectively extinct in the American wild almost 40 years ago, but, like the Neanderthal, it lives on in descendants still thriving today. That's the welcome discovery revealed in a study in Genes, which found a substantial amount of red wolf DNA in two road-kill canines from a wild pack on Galveston Island in Texas. A genetic analysis of the "ambiguous-looking" animals suggests a hybrid of red wolf and coyote, says Princeton biologist Elizabeth Heppenheimer. "It's incredibly rare to rediscover animals in a region where they were thought to be extinct, and it's even more exciting to show that a piece of an endangered genome has been preserved in the wild," she tells the AP, which reports the discovery "coincides with similar DNA findings in wild canines in southwestern Louisiana." The last wild red wolves were spotted in Texas and Louisiana before extinction in 1980.
Tracking the wily coyote on the Gulf Coast:
The red wolf that commonly roamed the Gulf Coast in the 19th and early 20th centuries was declared extinct in 1980. Before its demise, though, it apparently mated with the coyote, whose progeny may now carry red-wolf genes; their gray-brown fur is burnished with red, like the Blood Moon.
Rediscovery of Red Wolf Ghost Alleles in a Canid Population Along the American Gulf Coast:
Abstract -- 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 Canis 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.
Wolf in coyote clothing. Now that's a stealthy animal.
------
3:50 PM 2/5/2019
Comments