lycaon) (subsequently referred to as the ‘Eastern timber/Great Lakes wolf’). rufus) (subsequently referred to as the red wolf), as well as the Northeastern groups that are frequently referred to as Eastern timber wolves, Eastern wolves, Algonquin wolves or Great Lakes wolves ( C. These include the Southeastern red wolf ( C. Outstanding questions also pertain to the taxonomic status of the North American wolf-like canids.
Grey wolf forms full#
Therefore, dog-ascertained markers may not be able to reveal the full genetic structure of wolves, and underestimate their true genetic diversity. Although dogs and wolves are closely related, phylogenetic analyses based on their nuclear genomes show that dogs are a distinct monophyletic clade within wolves. Furthermore, previous nuclear-DNA (nuDNA) based studies analysed SNP markers that were initially identified in the domestic dog ( C. For example, nuclear DNA-based studies remain to include the full range of North American continental populations, omitting, for example, the Greenland wolves, despite mitochondrial DNA evidence suggesting it might represent an isolated population. While this represents a major step forward in terms of describing the population structure, much remains to be learned. Analysing ~40–50,000 SNPs from genotype arrays, the hitherto most comprehensive studies have identified seven North American grey wolf populations and ecotypes, which are referred to as West Forest, Boreal Forest, Arctic, High Arctic, British Columbia, Atlantic Forest, and Mexican wolves. Grey wolves ( Canis lupus) currently occupy a wide range of habitats across North America, including the tundra, taiga, desert, plain, and boreal forest. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The Qimmeq project ( ), funded by The Velux Foundations ( ) and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond ( ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Raw reads are available at NCBI under the following accession numbers SAMN10246085-SAMN10246099.įunding: This work was supported by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (681396 – Extinction Genomics) ( ), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (H2020 655732 – WhereWolf) ( ) and The Qimmeq project ( ), funded by The Velux Foundations ( ) and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond ( ). Received: Accepted: OctoPublished: November 12, 2018Ĭopyright: © 2018 Sinding et al.
PLoS Genet 14(11):Įditor: Takashi Gojobori, National Institute of Genetics, JAPAN (2018) Population genomics of grey wolves and wolf-like canids in North America.
Genetic diversity analyses reveal particularly high inbreeding and low heterozygosity in these Polar wolves, consistent with long-term isolation from the other North American wolves.Ĭitation: Sinding M-HS, Gopalakrishan S, Vieira FG, Samaniego Castruita JA, Raundrup K, Heide Jørgensen MP, et al. Furthermore, we identify three distinct populations in the high arctic, one being a previously unidentified “Polar wolf” population endemic to Ellesmere Island and Greenland. In addition to providing full genome support for the previously proposed coyote-wolf admixture origin for the taxonomically controversial red, Eastern timber and Great Lakes wolves, the discriminatory power offered by our dataset suggests all North American grey wolves, including the Mexican form, are monophyletic, and thus share a common ancestor to the exclusion of all other wolves. This included 15 new genomes (13 North American grey wolves, 1 red wolf and 1 Eastern timber/Great Lakes wolf), ranging from 0.4 to 15x coverage. We explored their population structure and regional gene flow using a dataset of 40 full genome sequences that represent the extant diversity of North American wolves and wolf-like canid populations. North America is currently home to a number of grey wolf ( Canis lupus) and wolf-like canid populations, including the coyote ( Canis latrans) and the taxonomically controversial red, Eastern timber and Great Lakes wolves.
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