look at this incredibly haunting coyote from Ohio I saw on inaturalist
I have a lot of really annoying thoughts about coyotes and how its like, a known fact that eastern coyotes are wolf and dog hybrids,
and the current red wolf population came from an effort to separate the “pure” red wolves from coyote hybrids,
and the effective population size of red wolves (genetically how much the diversity is equivalent to) is like, 10 animals, which means there’s severe inbreeding depression,
but the red wolf genes are STILL OUT THERE they’re just IN COYOTES and a lot of the coyotes probably have a HIGH CONTENT OF WOLF
And there has been SO much controversy over whether red wolves are their own species and a lot of people insist they’re “just coyotes”
and people don’t respect coyotes even if they do respect wolves and think they are totally different even though they have intermixed often in their evolutionary history.
and people keep shooting endangered wolves because “I thought it was a coyote,”
and basically one species is valued and the other species is considered to have no value even though they’re not even totally separate things and a wolf that’s part coyote has “polluted” genes but a coyote that’s part wolf is just like. completely worthless and unremarkable for conservation.
anyways. Look at this handsome animal. Wonder what its genes are like. The tucked in waist says “dog” to me. Amazing how these creatures are evolving before our eyes and people are like “yeah yeah coyotes whatever”
@cosmosinmycoffee omg thank you for this addition, I hadn’t heard of this playing out with grolar bears
I just Do Not get this prejudice towards naturally formed hybrids and denying that they have any conservation value. Yes, maybe it happened because of anthropogenic changes to the animals habitat, but…so what? Isn’t it amazing that evolution can pull these neat tricks to ensure a creature’s survival and the preservation of genetic diversity?
Another thing—I’ve read a lot of papers and studies about evolutionary history of species, and it is super normal for species to split, hybridize and blend together, split even more, and hybridize again over and over and over throughout the evolution of the clade.
It’s called reticulate evolution and it’s a major reason why resolving the taxonomic relationships of groups that radiated rapidly is a HUGE pain in the ass. A lot of times, species in the same genus are perfectly reproductively compatible with each other, just separated by niche or by the area they live in, and when those boundaries shift or when genetic diversity is scarce the species can merge again.
With red wolves, the conservationists have gone to great lengths to prevent hybridization with coyotes, including sterilizing coyotes in the region they’re being released into the wild, and I just…I know there’s reasoning behind it, they want to preserve the expression of wolf genes as much as possible, but I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I think of how little genetic diversity exists in the red wolf population and how inbred those animals are becoming.
There’s just something about humans doing so much intervention and effort to stop the wolves from taking coyotes as mates to maintain their “genetic purity”…Animals try to avoid inbreeding. Most animals have a drive to disperse and find mates they’re not related to. And the coyote-wolf hybrids are ridiculously successful little beasts, more successful and adaptable than either of their progenitors.
Like I get wanting to preserve the wolf phenotype and the niche it can fill, but these animals are just doing what is healthy and beneficial for their offspring. They don’t know or care what a species is.
oh my god y'all i’ve been reading a bunch more about this and the scientists are fightingggggggg
basically it has been traditional to think hybrids are maladapted evolutionary dead ends, but it turns out hybridization is common and natural and plays a major role in evolution, which is bad news for the idea of a “species,” which is a BIG PROBLEM for conservation, because…protected species, endangered species list, species conservation.
All the laws are based on species!!! In fact, hybrids are often considered a THREAT to species conservation. But the scientists are looking at the evidence and it’s like okay species lowkey aren’t real so what are we conserving.
One paper I looked at points out the, uhh… “value-laden” terminology used to describe hybridization—words like “contamination” and “pollution” which….hey that sounds an awful lot like eugenics?
And it literally is! It’s an obsession with “purity” without considering how the ecosystem is actually affected! It turns out that a lot of the claims of hybridization forming a threat to rare species, are bullshit with no actual evidence. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that hybridization can sometimes benefit rare species, or even form something entirely new that is better at survival than its parents.
For example, coral is under extreme and immediate threat from climate change. There is a case where two declining species of coral have hybridized and formed a third new species, that is way better adapted to climate change—in fact its population is increasing. Scientists watching this are like “…guys? I think the field of conservation might be terribly wrong about the whole ‘hybridization is the devil’ thing.”
In fact, we could end up destroying species that otherwise could survive by trying to bottle them up in a tiny, inbred “pure” gene pool, instead of allowing their genes to continue existing in a robust mixed population.
