Wolves? Wolf!

July 29, 2016 7:42 PM

There is only one species of wolf in North America. Genetic analysis has found that the "Eastern Wolf" and the "Red Wolf" are hybrids of the Grey Wolf and the Coyote.

The practical significance is that if the Eastern Wolf and Red Wolf are reclassified as varieties of Gray Wolf, the increased numbers and range of the Gray Wolf may be such that the Gray Wolf may no longer be eligible for protection under the Endangered Species act.

posted by Chocolate Pickle (38 comments total)

The next question, I think, is whether Coyotes are actually a separate species. The usual definition "species" is that if groups of creatures don't cross-breed, even if they are capable of doing so without producing mules, then they are different species.

But now we learn that Coyotes and Gray Wolves have been crossbreeding when circumstances allow due to overlapping ranges. Doesn't that make them varieties of the same species rather than different species?

(My head hurts.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:48 PM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

North America knows no wolf but the Gray Wolf!
posted by prize bull octorok at 7:52 PM on July 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

The usual definition of species doesn't really hold up. It's a much bigger and longer-known problem with birds, which have more and smaller chromosomes than mammals and thus form fertile hybrids more easily. There is a longstanding war among birders between the "clumpers" who want to merge everything that can interbreed with fertile offspring into single species, and the "splitters" who say it's more complicated than that and that the resulting hybrids are not just simply fertile, but that there are complicated relationships as to exactly which other hybrids they can be fertile with.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:01 PM on July 29, 2016 [16 favorites]

This does not change the fact that I want to hug most wolves.



Which is probably a terrible idea.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:02 PM on July 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

So just a lone wolf?
posted by carsonb at 8:03 PM on July 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

pictures of

Grey Wolves

Eastern Wolves (mostly wolf)

Red Wolves (mostly coyote)

Because the article didn't have any
posted by rebent at 8:14 PM on July 29, 2016 [14 favorites]

Yeah, the Cama (cross-breed of old world camel with new world llama) kind of makes me think the whole species thing is an arbitrary distinction to some extent.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:56 PM on July 29, 2016

Wolves are ok, but I love to watch coyotes. Especially when they are hunting field rats in a pasture. Its good to have the little tricksters running around the country.
posted by ridgerunner at 9:06 PM on July 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

The usual definition of species doesn't really hold up.

Yeah. Even when I was studying A level biology getting on for 20 years ago, the course and standard textbooks discussed the various different methods for defining species and basically came down to "you pick and justify your definition according to your purpose".
posted by howfar at 9:56 PM on July 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Wiki article about the Cama linked by BrotherCaine above includes the delightful detail that of the five camas produced to date, the second was named "Kamilah."

Yes, the (cama cama) cama Kamilah.

what's she like? Oh, you know. She comes and goes, she comes and goes.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 10:26 PM on July 29, 2016 [19 favorites]

Wolves are ok, but I love to watch coyotes. Especially when they are hunting field rats in a pasture. Its good to have the little tricksters running around the country.

Or indeed, in the city. We saw one just the other night.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:48 PM on July 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Red Wolves (mostly coyote)

Those photos look like coyotes to me. As a non-expert, I would never have thought they were wolves at all.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:51 PM on July 29, 2016

>The usual definition of species doesn't really hold up.

Yeah. Even when I was studying A level biology getting on for 20 years ago, the course and standard textbooks discussed the various different methods for defining species and basically came down to "you pick and justify your definition according to your purpose".

Exactly. Also "fertile hybrid as a delineator of species" is one of those things taught in school in hopes of simplifying the concept but isn't really and wasn't ever really correct. At least not in any recent taxonomic context. Sort of like gravity isn't caused by the mass of an object, which is (was, I hope) frequently taught in school. Rather it's the curve in spacetime created by an object. I'm still pissed about that one.

Also, guessing there are at least a handful of scientists out there that will vehemently and persuasively argue why this is incorrect. Genetic testing was supposed to help sort this out- instead biologists have a whole new set of data to argue over the interpretation of.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 10:55 PM on July 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

And on that note, novel species can emerge from hybridization. It's thought to be the case when there is some sort of change that would put two similar but distinct species together for some reason. My question then becomes- do either the eastern wolf and (especially) the red wolf breed true? If so, does its origins matter? How old does a "species" have to be for it to be a species? Evolution and speciation can happen in quick spurts, especially when there is some sort of change that puts pressure on them. Red wolves obviously aren't just grey wolves, nor are they just coyotes. Are they just hybrids, or are they something new? You certainly can't count them as part of the grey wolf population.

(I know little of red wolves and less of eastern wolves so do not know the answer to some of my questions might rule out this line of thought.)
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:08 PM on July 29, 2016

And because I wanted to know more, this blogger has some compelling thoughts. According to the paper he references, red wolf = coyote with some wolf mixed in, and those that are more phenotypically "wolf" get labeled as a red wolf. While the eastern gray wolf might be an actual species or stable hybrid.

Also, wolves and coyotes have been crossing for a long time, and have the largest hybrid zone of any land animal. Huh. (I haven't looked into this person's credentials or the paper he references, so take with a grain of salt.)
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:24 PM on July 29, 2016

According to the article, Eastern Wolves only go back about a hundred years.

One of the reasons that Wolves and Coyotes have stayed apart all this time is a combination of geography and drastically different life styles. Wolves lived in lush forests and hunted herd animals like deer, elk, and moose, which were best hunted by packs. Coyotes lived in the desert where being in a pack was a prescription for starvation, so they tended to a loner life style and got into the habit of eating anything that moves. (Though before the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, during the winters the coyotes there would form packs to hunt deer and elk. So that instinct was still present in the species.)

And there were some major geological barriers that kept them apart, like the Mississippi river and sundry others.

But when Europeans showed up here and started building bridges then there were some changes. Coyotes were unknown east of the Mississippi until about 50 years ago. Now they are seen in Maine.

Anyhoo, the Eastern Wolf hybridization apparently only happened about a hundred years ago (1920's). The Red Wolf goes back a few centuries.

How old does a "species" have to be for it to be a species?

I think probably it has to be old enough to start diverging genetically. The point of this study is that it hasn't happened.

(And the answer to my own question is that wolves and coyotes have diverged genetically quite a lot, so they really are different species.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:13 AM on July 30, 2016

Or indeed, in the city. We saw one just the other night.

That's a great pix of C-144's pup. In the mid 80's there was a pair that worked that open space between the Ontario Speedway and the truck stops to the south east on I-10. I looked for them every time I laid over, never saw any pups.

Back here in the Ozarks, I'm lucky to live at the western edge of one packs turf and often get to hear them doing dueling howls with the west pack. On a really good night I can hear the south west pack join in. Other nights they can be noisier than a pack of beagles, yipping to each other while chasing a rabbit in the pasture right across the road. They make cool neighbors.
posted by ridgerunner at 2:25 AM on July 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

They can't possibly be the same species. Everyone knows no true wolf would stoop so low as to breed with a coyote.
posted by TedW at 3:34 AM on July 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

The usual definition of species doesn't really hold up. It's a much bigger and longer-known problem with birds, which have more and smaller chromosomes than mammals and thus form fertile hybrids more easily.

Even worse is that in botany there is pretty much no clear species concept at all. This leads to massive naming confusion and the potential for significant conservation failures.
posted by srboisvert at 4:44 AM on July 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I read the article, but I couldn't discern an answer to this - does this mean that we could more likely preserve the Red Wolf? I live in NC and have done a small amount of advocacy and donations on behalf of the Red Wolf and would really like to see the "species" survive.
posted by Slothrop at 6:59 AM on July 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I work in livestock genomics, and the whole of species is dodgy. The addition of DNA data to the mix often just confuses things further. We want some way to distinguish one group of organisms from another, and morphology seems like a reasonable way to do that, but appearances are deceiving. Consider breeds -- we know they're an artifact of selective breeding under human supervision, but there's such tremendous variety that if you didn't know better you could easily conclude that, say, dachshunds must be a different species from Irish wolf hounds.
posted by wintermind at 7:46 AM on July 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

The usual definition of species doesn't really hold up. It's a much bigger and longer-known problem with birds, which have more and smaller chromosomes than mammals and thus form fertile hybrids more easily

We recently learned that one of our parrots is now considered a different species than she was when we got her 20 years ago. Apparently "they," whoever "they" are, decided that two types of birds that were considered sub-species are now separate species.
posted by not that girl at 9:15 AM on July 30, 2016

I learned not to rely on fertile hybrids to define a species a long time ago because there is no way Vulcans and humans are a single species.
posted by linux at 10:06 AM on July 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

I live in a very coyote heavy area (there's a really big pack less than a third of a mile to the east, and a smaller one less than half a mile to the west). They come down our street at night, we've had kill sites in our front yard, and we're pretty sure they killed my next door neighbor's cat on Wednesday. I see them all the time. I am pretty familiar with what coyotes look like.

But a couple times, I've see some that were really, really big. They still look like coyotes from a distance, but almost twice as big as normal. I've always suspected they had some wolf or something in them, but it just seemed like, if that were happening, someone other than me would have noticed first.

I secretly think there's a possibility, though.
posted by ernielundquist at 10:16 AM on July 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Then there are ring species, with two divergent lines that can interbreed along each line and with the original species, but the tips of each line can't interbreed. How many species are there then?

And let's not talk of microbiomes.

As Douglas Adams - DNA himself - said: it really is terribly
complicated.
posted by Devonian at 10:22 AM on July 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

"My question then becomes- do either the eastern wolf and (especially) the red wolf breed true? "

Looks like it.
posted by I-baLL at 10:58 AM on July 30, 2016

This is all very interesting but the real question is Could you beat one in an unarmed fight?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 11:29 AM on July 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

longstanding war among birders between the "clumpers" who want to merge everything that can interbreed with fertile offspring into single species, and the "splitters"

Birders, same as entomologists, quantum mechanics, and geomorphologists. This is one of the major doctrinal fights in science. (I'm generally a lumper, but there are merits to both viewpoints).
posted by bonehead at 12:11 PM on July 30, 2016

I probably could beat one in an unarmed fight, but to be fair we're not anywhere NEAR the same weight class and I suspect the wolf has never trained to defend against being choked out by a biped.
posted by some loser at 12:27 PM on July 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Re clumpers and splitters...

Reality is what it is. The problem here is that we humans are trying to impose a categorization which may not actually have any reality.

It's like the question of whether viruses are alive. We know about viruses; there isn't any question about what they are and how they work. It's really a question about how you define "life", which may not matter. We're trying to draw lines in the gray and say "this side is white, that side is black". But if we can figure out where to draw that line, it won't make any difference to the viruses.

It's the same thing here: the birds (and canines) are what they are. Does it actually have any significance whether we declare them the same species are different ones? The critters won't know and their lives will go on exactly as they are no matter what we do.

There's a degree to which this is an "angels dancing on the head of a pin" argument.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:29 PM on July 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

Not wolf, Wolfen!
posted by Chitownfats at 1:16 PM on July 30, 2016

It has significance to the wolves if they're two species or one, since the law will protect them differently in each case. The chances of getting shot is pretty damn significant to a wolf, even if it has no concept of what is going on, or why.

In that case, because the wolves are what they are, it makes more sense to reframe the law in terms of, say, distinct populations rather than just species.

In all cases, the answer to clumping vs splitting is 'depends'. It might not matter to virologists whether a virus is alive - and life has always been famously hard to define - and the virus certainly doesn't care, but an exobiologist might be keenly concerned about the definition.

I've always found this dichotomy pleasant to dwell on. Here's a picture of two apples. How many apples are there? Viable and useful, answers include none (it's a picture), one (they're the same kind of apple), two (there are two apples), p where p=the universal population of apples (you didn't specify how many apples are in the picture) and 'unknown' due to questions about definitions, phemonenology and the quantum nature of the universe.

Or - there were three,, but a wolf ate one
posted by Devonian at 1:22 PM on July 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

So I guess "endangered species" really means endangered DNA then? Got it.
posted by unknowncommand at 1:41 PM on July 30, 2016

There's a degree to which this is an "angels dancing on the head of a pin" argument.

This is only true if you do not care about what you are talking about. For instance I collect, grow, and hybridize South African succulent plants, Haworthia and Gasteria, that frustrate the hell out of taxonomists and are lumped,split, lumped, renamed and split again.

Now those are Genus level categories. So one of my preferred plants is Haworthia limifolia. A relatively common hard leaved Haworthia that is pretty easy to grow. So 'limifolia' is the species level designation. Seems straightforward and clear at first glance.

Yet this is also Haworthia limifolia. As is this one. And this one. As is this one.

So which of these variations am I willing to lump together into a single category? As a collector - none of them. I can appreciate a botanist's motivation for a simplified taxonomy but I absolutely reject the utility of it for my purposes and I shudder to imagine simple taxonomies being used for preservation purposes because so much could be lost forever.

You can see the rejection of lumping reflected in the newer naming strategies adopted by many botanists/collectors where plants have the two part linnean genus-species name plus often a varietal level name (usually following a v. or var).

You also often see either a collection number that would link to an individual who collected the plant from the wild and a location (like GM256) or just locality information included as part of the name or both like this.

So I guess my point would be that you should take a closer look at those angels on the head of the pin. They are probably not identical.
posted by srboisvert at 3:50 PM on July 30, 2016

SRBoisvert, that's nothing like the amount of variation in Brassica Oleracea, which is considered a single species despite the fact that it include cauliflower, broccoli, kale, collard greens, and brussels sprouts.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:07 PM on July 30, 2016

Re: taking one single-handed in a fight.

If you think you can, you're forgetting that canines have super-natural abilities. Witness our 45-pound-border-collie: when on a walk she, if NOT DONE sniffing a clump of grass, can suddenly have an unknown but much, much larger mass, becoming a fixed part of the landscape for all practical purposes.
posted by maxwelton at 7:28 PM on July 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Wiki article about the Cama linked by BrotherCaine above includes the delightful detail that of the five camas produced to date, the second was named "Kamilah."

(afixes on geek hat)

That's pretty interesting, as the Perl language has longed used the Camel as their symbol, but now uses a... ...bug for Perl 6. That bug's name?

Camelia.
posted by alex_skazat at 8:04 PM on July 30, 2016

Not so fast. Nature has a summary of some contradictory research: Eastern wolves, often considered to be a hybrid of gray wolves and coyotes, actually represent a separate species, revealed by the latest genomic research published in Biology Letters. The paper also helps clarify the hybrid origins of other wild canines, including Eastern coyotes and Great Lakes wolves.

In conclusion, canids (and their researchers) are a land of contrasts.
posted by fedward at 7:25 AM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]