New study suggests that there is only one species of wolves in America. The new work, published Wednesday in Science Advances, determined that the gray wolf is the one true wolf in the United States.
The red wolf found in the Southern U.S. and the eastern wolf found primarily in central Ontario, are in fact coyote and gray wolf hybrids.
In August of 2000, a group of Canadian researchers published a paper arguing that the eastern wolf, long considered a subspecies of the gray wolf, was in fact its own species. subsequent papers suggested that the eastern wolf's traditional range included the Great Lakes region and the 29 Eastern states.
When gray wolves were first protected, their historic geographic range was listed as including some of the same parts of the country that some scientists were saying had been occupied by eastern wolf.
Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA and senior author of the study, along with his team analyzed the genomes of 12 pure gray wolves from areas with no coyotes, three coyotes from areas where there were no gray wolves, as well as six eastern wolves and three red wolves. Their goal is to look for a mysterious genetic material that was not gray wolf or coyote, and could be uniquely considered red wolf or eastern wolf.
Wayne hopes his team's findings will ensure that the gray wolf can continue to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. A decision on that from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could come as early as this fall.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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