A 2018 study titled ‘Rediscovery of Red Wolf Ghost Alleles in a Canid Population Along the American Gulf Coast,’ published in the journal Genes, found red wolf genes in the DNA of wild canines there. Red wolves had been declared extinct in the wild by 1980. Because conventional science had dismissed red wolf sightings along the Gulf Coast as misidentified coyotes, even the scientists were surprised by the finding,.
Imagine an animal that vanished from the wild and then left a clue in a place no one expected. That’s what happened on Galveston Island, Texas.
The Princeton University study news report said 240 canines were captured for the program. North Carolina began reintroducing red wolves in 1987. But the report says that as of 2018, the wild population had fewer than 40 red wolves, putting the species once again on the brink of extinction in the wild.
Then the second sample got lost along the way, so Wooten sent the scalpel he had used to take it. Heppenheimer said it may represent red wolf genes lost during captive breeding. If reintroduced wolves interbreed with local coyotes, the hybrids could help restore lost red wolf genes.
He emailed Bridgett vonHoldt’s lab at Princeton, requesting genetic testing on two road-killed animals. vonHoldt says she gets that kind of request often. Researcher Elizabeth Heppenheimer said no one had ever sent the lab a scalpel before, which made extracting that DNA memorable. The study title uses the term “ghost alleles”, and alleles are simply different versions of a gene. Texas may be a good place for future reintroduction efforts, Heppenheimer said, but first more research is needed. There might not be a “canonical coyote” in the American Southeast, said senior author vonHoldt. Some coyotes, she said, might retain genetic traces of an extinct species.
Red wolves (Canis rufus) once ranged throughout the southeastern United States. They are bigger than coyotes but smaller than gray wolves. By the 1970s, they were becoming extinct, and many were cross-breeding with coyotes. The last known red wolves were captured for a captive breeding program in an effort to save the species. Seventeen were determined to be pure wolves, and of these, fourteen were able to breed. The study began with wildlife biologist Ron Wooten, who had been tracking a pack of canines on Galveston Island. But his enthusiasm and dedication showed through, as did some very interesting photographs of the dogs. The Galveston animals were genetically closer to captive red wolves than to typical southeastern coyotes. They had genes found in captive red wolves, but not found in coyotes and gray wolves. They also had a genetic variation found in no known North American canine. Heppenheimer, a lead author along with Kristin Brzeski, credited the people on the ground for the discovery.
