Rediscovery of Red Wolf Ghost Alleles in a Canid Population Along the American Gulf Coast.

Elizabeth Heppenheimer,Ron Wooten,Kristin Brzeski,Linda Rutledge,William Waddell,Michael Chamberlain,Joseph Hinton,Daniel Stahler,Bridgett Vonholdt

doi:10.3390/genes9120618

Elizabeth Heppenheimer, Ron Wooten + Show 7 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/genes9120618

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Abstract

Rediscovering species once thought to be extinct or on the edge of extinction is rare. Red wolves have been extinct along the American Gulf Coast since 1980, with their last populations found in coastal Louisiana and Texas. We report the rediscovery of red wolf ghost alleles in a canid population on Galveston Island, Texas. We analyzed over 7000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 60 canid representatives from all legally recognized North American Canis species and two phenotypically ambiguous canids from Galveston Island. We found notably high Bayesian cluster assignments of the Galveston canids to captive red wolves with extensive sharing of red wolf private alleles. Today, the only known extant wild red wolves persist in a reintroduced population in North Carolina, which is dwindling amongst political and taxonomic controversy. Our rediscovery of red wolf ancestry after almost 40 years introduces both positive opportunities for additional conservation action and difficult policy challenges.

Highlights

Red wolves (Canis rufus) once inhabited the southeastern United States but were declared extinct in the wild by 1980 due to habitat loss, predator control programs, disease, and interbreeding with encroaching coyotes (Canis latrans) [1]
Red wolves were most differentiated from gray wolves (FST = 0.136) and most similar to coyotes (FST : Red wolf–coyote = 0.040, red wolf–eastern wolf = 0.093, gray wolf–eastern wolf = 0.086, coyote–gray wolf = 0.062, coyote–eastern wolf = 0.042)
A principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that clusters were concordant with taxonomic classifications (Figure 1A), consistent with previous analyses, and spatial clustering of the two Galveston Island (GI) canids proximal to coyotes

Summary

Introduction

Red wolves (Canis rufus) once inhabited the southeastern United States but were declared extinct in the wild by 1980 due to habitat loss, predator control programs, disease, and interbreeding with encroaching coyotes (Canis latrans) [1]. With red wolves on the brink of extinction, recovery was initiated through trapping what were believed to be the last wild red wolves along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas in the 1970s [1,2,3,4,5]. Individuals were selected as founders for the captive breeding program based on morphology and. Forty individuals were selected for captive breeding, of which 17 were deemed 100% wolf. Only 14 wolves successfully reproduced and became the founders from which all red wolves in the recovery program descend

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