Eastern Coyote Study

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This is interesting, dont think I've seen it posted.  There was a big article in PA Outdoor News that was mentioning wolf DNA in eastern coyotes so I looked up what I could find about it.

Press Releases :: 09/22/09


Contact: Joanne Guilmette
Phone: 518/474-8730
Fax: 518/486-3696
E-Mail: jguilmet@mail.nysed.gov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
STATE MUSEUM RESEARCHERS CO-AUTHOR STUDY ON COYOTES

Albany, New York -- 09/22/09

ALBANY, NY (September 23, 2009) â€" Two New York State Museum scientists have co-authored a new study published today in a major scientific journal that explains how coyotes evolved to be larger and stronger over the past 90 years, dramatically expanding their geographic range and becoming the top predator in the Northeast.

Dr. Roland Kays, the museum’s curator of mammals, and Dr. Jeremy Kirchman, curator of birds, co-authored an article on their research that was published in Biology Letters, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes high-quality biology research . The other author was Abigail Curtis, who did this work as a SUNY Albany undergraduate, but is now a graduate student at the University of California in Los Angeles.

The article notes that the North American coyote evolved as a hunter of small prey in the Great Plains, but rapidly colonized all of eastern North America over the last half-century. Previous research suggested that the spread of agriculture and the extinction of wolves may have helped coyote expansion, but genetic interchange with remnant wolf populations had never been thoroughly addressed.

This new study of eastern coyote genetics and skull morphology shows that remnant wolf populations in Canada hybridized with coyotes expanding north of the Great Lakes, thereby contributing to the evolution of coyotes from mousers of western grasslands to deer hunters of eastern forests. The resulting coy-wolf hybrids are larger, with wider skulls that are better adapted for hunting deer. Historical records of the coyote population expansion indicated that movement along the northern route was five times faster than along the route south of the Great Lakes.  Populations of pure western coyote and coy-wolf hybrids are presently coming into contact in areas of western New York and Pennsylvania. 

The scientists based their study on DNA sequence data from 696 eastern coyotes and measurements of 196 skulls from State Museum specimens. They also tested three very large animals that looked more like large, full-blooded grey wolves. Two of the animals had the western grey wolf genetic signature and one had a Great Lakes wolf signature, suggesting that a few full-sized wolves have recently migrated into New York and Vermont, but are not breeding here. Only one of the 696 coyote samples was closely related to domestic dogs, showing that coyotes are not frequently breeding with domestic dogs in the region and the popular moniker ‘coydog’ is technically inaccurate.

In the past, Kays has studied coyote diet and distribution in Albany’s Pine Bush and the Adirondacks.  The research indicated that deer accounted for approximately one-third of the coyote’s diet and that they made extensive use of forested areas.

An Albany resident, Kays received his undergraduate degree in biology at Cornell University before earning his doctorate in zoology at the University of Tennessee.

Kirchman, also of Albany, uses DNA sequencing technology to examine genetic differences among populations and species. Most of his work has focused on populations of birds that are isolated on islands, and recently he has focused on habitat islands on mountain tops, including the Catskills and Adirondacks.

He has an undergraduate degree in biology from Illinois Wesleyan University, a master’s degree from Louisiana State University, and a doctorate degree in zoology from the University of Florida.

          The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Started in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, it is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/press/2009/coauthors.cfm

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Here's another link I found pretty much stating what the other had said


Evolution of a coywolf. (animalpicturesarchive.com)
Lately, “coywolves” have been making headlines and raising eyebrows. They are a wild canid that is a hybrid between a coyote and a wolf. It may sound like an urban legend, but coywolves are real. I first learned about this quirky common name via a news article from The Star in Canada, Meet the Coywolf (by reporter Carola Vyhnak), which does a surprisingly good job of detailing the coywolf and its increasing run-ins with humans on the eastern edge of greater Toronto. And now, a new study is out offering both a coarse-scale genetic analysis of this new hybrid species, and specific trends in their skull shape.

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/09/23/rsbl.2009.0575.abstract
One thing I find so interesting about this phenomenon is the plasticity of the two species that they can interbreed so successfully. Why is this? Species within the Canid genus have a remarkable ability for crossing the species barrier and procreating under certain conditions. Dogs (Canis familiaris) can mate with some wolves (Canis lupus). Wolves can mate with coyotes (Canis latrans). And unlike other species that create infertile hybrids, the offspring of these pairings can be fertile, so when these hybrid offspring mate and produce their own pups, they introduce new genes into one of their parent populations. For example, when a coyote and a wolf mate and create a coywolf, and then that coywolf lands a coyote suitor and they have their own pups, those pups are born with some wolf genes that are then brought into the coyote population.

Until recently, most of the public’s attention has been directed at the affect of coyote hybridization upon wolves, with little conversation about the effects of wolf hybridization upon coyotes. The general thought in the U.S. seems to be that there are plenty of coyotes â€" so why worry about them â€" but since wolves are largely endangered here, we need to protect their genetic diversity from “pollution” by coyotes. But what about the coyotes? How might wolf genes be helping or hurting them?

A new study published Sept. 23 in the journal Biology Letters asserts that coyote-wolf hybridization events in the northeastern U.S. have lent coyotes genes that gave them an extra edge when expanding their range into new territories. The study by Roland Kays, et al. analyzed mtDNA from 686 eastern coyotes and  analyzed 196 skull measurements associated with what the authors call the coyotes “two-front colonization pattern.” The two-fronts relate to the coyotes expansion from the Great Plains and then a.) north and east the long way around the Great Lakes, and b.) a straight shot due east from Ohio, the short way below the Great Lakes. Intriguingly, the study states that the coyotes expansion on the longer front north around the Great Lakes occurred at a rate five times faster than the coyotes that expanded along the short route. They attribute this speed to the coyotes exposure to wolves in Canada along the northern route, whereas the coyotes along the southern Great Lakes route expanded in the absence of wolves, which had been extirpated in the previous 90 years. The two expanding fronts then met, giving scientists an opportunity to compare the effects of geographic travels upon each front.

What could make animals from the same parent population expand five times faster in one direction versus another? Kays and his team say that as the northern front of coyotes expanded around the Great Lakes, they hybridized with eastern wolves in Ontario. The injection of wolf genes into the coyote population in this area then led to larger coyotes, which in turn enabled them to hunt deer. Kays and his team also found evidence that the coywolves have a stronger bite than traditional coyotes do, as evidenced by skull musculature. Previously, some scientists had suggested that the larger coyote body size may be due to natural variation (phenotypic plasticity), but the authors state that:

Our results show that northeastern coyote populations are a hybrid swarm resulting from the widespread introgression of GLW [Great Lakes Wolves] genes. This suggests that hybridization introduced genetic variation for the rapid adaptation of more efficient predation on deer, including larger predator body size and skull dimensions.

Their nickname casts a playful tone, but these new hybrids are larger than their western coyote relatives and smaller than wolves. And their larger size is enabling them to hunt larger prey, which has  definite ecological implications. According to the Star article at the top of this post, people are reporting that the hybrids act bolder, like a wolf, but have retained the coyotes tolerance for urban areas. While only anecdotal, this does seem to be a logical extension of their larger stature.

The coywolves, then, have benefited from the wolf genes they acquired en route around the northern edge of the Great Lakes, and they are undergoing adaptive evolution. Kays’ study details the case that these animals have undergone a genetic change which has allowed them to use their environment differently (hunting larger prey) while at the same time, their environment has changed in the past century due to the eradication of wolves in the U.S.

What I find so interesting is that the traditionally western coyote acquired genes from eastern Canadian wolves, and brought those genes back to a region where eastern wolves had been extirpated decades ago.  I wonder to what degree these new coywolves will have an ecological impact in the east. Will conservation biologists one day be arguing for their protections, if they prove to play a similar role in the ecosystem as the extirpated red wolf, which once occupied land from the southeastern U.S. northward into southeastern Canada? And will people adapt to the coywolf as readily as it has adapted to its new habitat and us?

{1} Based upon the original research of Roland Kays, Abigail Curtis, and Jeremy J. Kirchman. Rapid adaptive evolution of northeastern coyotes via hybridization with wolves. Biology Letters. Published online Sept. 23, 2009. (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.0575)

{2} Kind thanks to Dr. Kays for providing me a copy of the study

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Intresting read...