The Economist describes a new species coming into existence due to competitive pressures and interbreeding:
LIKE some people who might rather not admit it, wolves faced with a scarcity of potential sexual partners are not beneath lowering their standards. It was desperation of this sort, biologists reckon, that led dwindling wolf populations in southern Ontario to begin, a century or two ago, breeding widely with dogs and coyotes. …
Interbreeding between animal species usually leads to offspring less vigorous than either parent—if they survive at all. But the combination of wolf, coyote and dog DNA that resulted from this reproductive necessity generated an exception. The consequence has been booming numbers of an extraordinarily fit new animal (see picture) spreading through the eastern part of North America. Some call this creature the eastern coyote. Others, though, have dubbed it the “coywolf”. Whatever name it goes by, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, reckons it now numbers in the millions.
Of course, there’s already CoyWolf.org:
Initially they were called coydog, then eastern coyote, but we now know that coywolf is the most appropriate descriptor of this animal because the original wolf found in the Northeast was most probably the smallish (~60 pound) eastern wolf (Canis lycaon), which is very closely related to (and possibly the same species as) the red wolf (Canis rufus). The eastern wolf is actually more closely related to western coyotes than they are to the larger gray (western) wolf (Canis lupus). Thus, the coywolf has “native” wolf genes and got here on its own four feet: it therefore should not be considered non-native or invasive. Furthermore, it is questionable if the gray wolf actually ever lived in the Northeast, or if the eastern wolf and possibly gray/eastern wolf hybrids (which are common in the Great Lakes states, Canis lupus x C. lycaon) were endemic to this region.
It leaves me wondering about other crossbreeds as well – what is the success rate insofar as new breeds surviving? 1%? Lower?
(h/t William Cloose)
