Does Romancing The Dog Put Real Wolves at Risk: Rise of the Hybrid Wolf-Dogs

“We found that while hybridization has not compromised the genetic distinctiveness of wolf populations, a large number of wild wolves in Eurasia carry a small proportion of gene variants derived from dogs, leading to the ambiguity of how we define genetically ‘pure wolves’.

“Our research highlighted that some individual wolves which had been identified as ‘pure wolves’ according to their physical characteristics were actually shown to be of mixed ancestry. On the other hand, two Italian wolves with an unusual, black coat color did not show any genetic signatures of hybridization, except for carrying a dog-derived variant of a gene linked to dark coloration. This suggests that the definition of genetically ‘pure’ wolves can be ambiguous and identifying admixed individuals can be difficult, implying that management strategies based on removal of suspected hybrids from wolf populations may be inefficient.

A wolf-dog hybrid with malamute ancestry

Credit: Katie Brady / Wikimedia Commons

“Instead, our study has highlighted a need to reduce the factors which can cause hybridisation, such as abundance of free-ranging dogs, small wolf population sizes, and unregulated hunting.”

Studying a specific type of genetic variation in the DNA sequences of wolves and domestic dogs – called Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) – the scientists identified the transfer of dog gene variants into wolf genomes.

A single DNA sequence is formed from a chain of four nucleotide bases and if some individuals in a population do not carry the same nucleotide at a specific position in the sequence, the variation is classified as an SNP.

Wolf-Dog Hybrid

Credit: Svartulfr1 at English Wikipedia

This study was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, the University of Lincoln, the Polish Committee for Scientific Research, the Italian Ministry of Environment, the US National Science Foundation, the Intramural Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research.

In the US, research collaborators were from Princeton University, the National Human Genome Research Institute based at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, and UCLA.

Wolf Dog playing with a ball in the snow

Credit: Thomas  / Wikimedia Commons

The international team also included researchers from the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Aalborg University in Denmark, the Mammal Research Institute, and the Institute of Nature Conservation, both at the Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as the Institute of Zoology at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

The findings have been published in the journal Evolutionary Applications, and the full study can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eva.12595.