Grant: Alliance Grants

There is a near 30-year debate on the origin of the eastern wolf in Canada (Canis sp. cf. lycaon; née Canis lupus lycaon) and the red wolf (C. rufus) in the eastern range of the United States (US). The competing hypotheses are that these two wolves combined represent a single species (C. lycaon) that originated in North America independently of the grey wolf (C. lupus) and is more closely related to the coyote (C. latrans); or that these wolves originated through the hybridization of grey wolves and coyotes. Recent work has shown evidence of for the first hypothesis, although evidence of contemporary and ancient grey wolf introgressive hybridization with wolves from eastern regions of North America confounds the interpretation of the results in the context of the two alternative hypotheses. Furthermore, the origin of modern coyotes has been suggested to date to 10,000 years ago with the now extinct progenitor being a larger, more "wolf-like" ancestor (C. latrans orcutti). The question then emerges whether this wolf-like Pleistocene coyote represents C. lycaon/C. rufus that colonized eastern North America post-Pleistocene and underwent ancient hybridization with emerging grey wolf populations. Applying paleogenomics to specimens pre-dating both contemporary wolf-coyote hybridization and the origin of modern coyotes would more accurately portray the ancestral origins of eastern wolves and allow characterization of Pleistocene-era grey wolf and coyote introgression. Eastern wolves are a threatened species in Ontario under the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario (COSSARO) and Canada's Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), but formal protection for this species has repeatedly been delayed due to outdated species debates, political priorities, and federal backlog. Trent University and the Hakai Institute have secured late Pleistocene (~15,000 years before present (ybp)) representative material of the eastern wolf. Actions that would help resolve this taxonomic uncertainty would better support the conservation of this endemic species to Canada and its role as an apex predator of the mixed coniferous-deciduous forests of central Ontario and Quebec, with broader significance to the Red Wolf.