Guest essay by Kip Hansen – April 16, 2024
Having survived United States Tax Day, I have the freedom to report on the Darwinian story of the day, complete with “just-so-story” elements that accompany almost every piece of news.
I have written about coyotes more than once. “The coyote (Canis latrans) is a species of dog native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the gray wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and the red wolf.” [ wiki ]
So, what's new on the Coyote Trail?: a “new” problem: speciation reversal – well, sort of.
As most of us know, coyotes are incredibly adaptable – they can live almost anywhere they can find food – and “coyote food” is almost anything small enough or slow enough to catch, alive or dead. “He is primarily a carnivore, feeding primarily on deer, rabbits, hares, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates, although it also occasionally eats fruits and vegetables.” [ wiki ] They are generally believed to be urban and suburban coyotes [ .pdf ] Also eat pet food left outside for cats and dogs, as well as the indoor cats and smaller dogs themselves. Coyotes are natural scavengers and will eat leftover food and human garbage when given the opportunity.
Where are coyotes found? In North America, almost everywhere:
I've recolored the legend to highlight expansion areas since 2000 (baby blue) – in the US, with expansion into Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina, as well as eastern Massachusetts. Remarkably, and worryingly to some ecologists, coyotes have been found for the first time in Panama and may be poised to cross the Darien Gap into South America.
So what about coyotes and species reversal? Well, through the miraculous modern DNA testing, it has been discovered that the long-thought-of-mythical coywolves (or coydogs) are not only real, but that these hybrids appear to outcompete other subspecies of coyotes at least east of the Mississippi.
Coyote subspecies:
- Barking dog (Mexican coyote)
- Canis barking kleptic (San Pedro Martir coyote)
- Dickey's barking dog (Salvador coyote)
- barking dog (southeastern coyote)
- Goldman barking dog (Belize coyote)
- Honduras barking dog (Honduras coyote)
- Fearless Barking Dog (Durango Coyote)
- Barking dog (northern coyote)
- James barking dog (Tiburón coyote)
- Barking dog (plains coyote)
- Barking dog (mountain coyote)
- Mearns Coyote Barking Dog
- Barking dog Microdon (Lower Rio Grande coyote)
- Barking Dog (California Valley Coyote)
- Peninsula Barking Dog (Coyote Peninsula)
- Texas Plains Coyote
- Barking Dog (Northeastern Coyote)
- Canis transrans umpquensis (Northwest Coast coyote)
- Barking Police Dog (Colima Coyote)
And this new (?) hybrid? “A “coywolf” is the nickname for eastern coyotes, a hybrid of wolves and coyotes that also contains a significant amount of genes from domestic dogs. This remarkable canine mutt experienced a population boom over the last century and can now be found in plains, parks and backyards across much of eastern North America. …. They are known to scientists as eastern coyotes. There is strong disagreement about whether they can be considered a separate species. However, it is obvious that this hybrid animal has some distinct differences from the two common coyotes (also called western coyotes), not to mention wolves and dogs.” [ source ] Over the past decade, the coywolf has received a lot of media attention, including a long article on The Conversation and even a PBS Nature episode, Meet the Coywolf.
According to Roland Kays, research professor at North Carolina State University and scientist at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences:
“This is what new genetic tests show all eastern coyotes are actually a mix of three species: coyote, wolf and dog. The percentages vary depending on the exact test being used and where the dog is located. …. Coyotes in the Northeast are primarily coyotes (60-84%), with lesser numbers of wolves (8-25%) and dogs (8-11%). Move south or east and this mix slowly changes. Virginia animals have, on average, more dog than wolf (85%:2%:13% coyote:wolf:dog), while Deep South coyotes had just a pinch of wolf and dog genes mixed in (91%:4%:5% coyote : wolfhound). Tests show that there are no animals that consist only of coyotes and wolves (i.e. a coyote), and that there are some eastern coyotes that have almost no wolf at all.” [ Kays in source]
Not to mention the “red wolf,” which is currently listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and was found through DNA testing in 2011: “These results support the hypothesis that red wolves are closely related to coyotes, but due to this fact somewhat different from them.” to a story of limited mixing with gray wolves. This historic mixing of gray wolves and coyotes was followed by extensive backcrossing into coyotes as the original gray wolf population disappeared in the southern and southeastern United States. …. The implications of our results are that they are a component of phenotypic differentiation Red wolves can be traced to the historical hybridization of distinct populations of gray wolves and coyotes. It has been suggested that hybrids are not clearly protected by the ESA (O'Brien and Mayr 1991), particularly hybrids between unlisted entities (US Fish and Wildlife Service 1973). Because a critical goal of the red wolf recovery project is to keep the introduced population free of hybridization (Hedrick and Fredrickson 2008), the program's rationale may need to be reconsidered since the existing red wolves clearly resulted from a process of interbreeding.” [ vonHoldt et al. 2011 ] In short, the so-called red wolf is just an earlier, relatively recent hybrid between gray wolves and coyotes, and as a hybrid between two non-endangered species, it is not itself a species and should not be listed as an endangered species.
Coyotes are canids, wolves are canids, domestic dogs are canids. They are very closely related canids….
There you will see the three species – dog, gray wolf, coyote – all right in the red field. When the opportunity presents itself, they interbreed and produce viable offspring. The offspring of such crossbreeding also interbreed and produce viable offspring. That's the old high school definition of a species: “A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically through sexual reproduction.” “By this definition are domestic dogs, wolves and coyotes all just variants of the same species, differing in color, size and habits, but all interbreeding happily and producing fertile and successful offspring.
And the legendary Coywolf? And his more-than-kissing cousin, the Coydog? According to Roland Kays (and many others) both are the case best classified as eastern coyotes. (Canis barks (var.)) However, others disagree.
Oh, and the “Just So Story”?
“We can estimate the date of the most recent hybridization events that created eastern coyotes by analyzing their genetic structure. Their DNA shows that coyotes mated with wolves about 100 years ago and with dogs about 50 years ago. A century ago, wolf populations in the Great Lakes were at their lowest point and lived at such low densities that Some reproductives probably couldn't find another wolf mate and had to settle for a coyote.”
Sounds like a raunchy singles bar joke to me…
End effect:
1. The Eastern coyote is a hybrid – a hybrid – of the gray wolf, coyote and domestic dog, in varying proportions throughout its range, generally east of the Mississippi River in North America. As this process continues, we are witnessing “species reversal” – the opposite of speciation – the reunion of individual species into one.
2. Attempts to declare it a new species are misguided – crossbreeding and backcross breeding continues to this day, producing new recognizable varietal hybrids.
3. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is already mistakenly protecting a wolf-coyote hybrid, the so-called red wolf, under the Endangered Species Act at great expense in a hopeless attempt to preserve a wild population of a hybrid animal that continues to interbreed in the wild through breeding with coyotes and domestic dogs
4. Coywolves and coydogs are simply different names for the same hybrid animals, which are differently composed mixes of gray wolf, coyote and domestic dog genes. There are different variations of this based on the DNA percentage of each contributing species and local influences on behavior and prey.
5. In upstate New York, parents still threaten their children by saying, “Make sure you get home before dark or you'll get the coydogs.”
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Author's comment:
This would all be properly called “taxonomy” – meaning naming different animals and placing them into the tree of life. And usually the rest of us – non-biologists and non-taxonomists – don't care what is decided.
But in today's world, declaring a particular animal an “endangered species” can have incredibly large and far-reaching consequences.
In New York State, coyotes can be hunted at any time of the day or night from October 1st through March 31st with no bag limit. You need a hunting license. There is a caveat: “Large coyotes (over 50 pounds) have been reported in New York, but they are uncommon.” Any dog weighing 50 pounds or more can be a wolf, a wolf hybrid, or a domestic dog. New York law protects wolves from hunting or trapping. It is also illegal to indiscriminately shoot domestic dogs or wolf hybrids. We have documented several wolves and wolf hybrids in New York over the last 20 years.” New York State does not appear to know that all Eastern coyotes are wolf-coyote-dog hybrids.
Note that opinions on the Darwinian theory of species vary widely. Feel free to discuss it in the comments.
Thank you for reading.
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