Talk:Coywolf/Archive 1

Canis soupus
New York Times coverage on the complicated science of coyotes and related species: Mysteries That Howl and Hunt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.246.123.254 (talk) 01:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Untitled
As dogs and wolves are the same species, this should be merged into Coy-dog. 69.177.215.245 (talk) 14:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not. Coydogs are unlikely to form viable populations in the wild, whereas the coywolf does.--Derek Andrews (talk) 12:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Eastern Coyote = coywolf?
The Eastern Coyote is a Coywolf, but it is not the only one. This article admits this, but this article also equates coywolf = Eastern Coyote. The Red Wolf is also a coywolf, but coywolf doesn't direct here there. Eastern Timber Wolf are proven Coywolves, too. Yet "Coywolf" does not direct there either. The Eastern Coyote needs its own article, describing only the Eastern Coyote, not coywolves in general. Coywolves in general should get their own article, or a disambiguation page, or a sort of article/disambiguation page hybrid, to speak of the coywolf phenomenon in general. There should be one article for the Red Wolf, one for the Eastern Timber, and one for the Eastern Coyote, and an umbrella article, "Coywolf". Four articles, not three. Coywolf and Eastern Coyote should not share one article because it's not the only one. Chrisrus (talk) 04:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The Eastern Coyote is not a coywolf but a coyote with some introgression of wolf DNA. The amount of DNA present in Eastern Coyotes is not enough to have the declared as a separate species therefore they should still be designated as a subspecies of coyote and should properly be attached to the coyote page. Sjemac. (talk) 03:40, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

In the "Eastern Coyote" section of this article, this statement: "The genetic composition of these animals is debated amongst scientists." is cited to by these refernces:


 * 1) Chambers, Steven M. A Perspective on the Genetic Composition of Eastern Coyotes, Northeastern Naturalist, Jun 2010, http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1656/045.017.0203


 * 1) Oosthoek, Sharon, The decline, fall and return of the red wolf, New Scientist, February 23, 2008, http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19726441.900-the-decline-fall-and-return-of-the-red-wolf.html.

The second of these doesn't seem to be talking about the Eastern Coyote at all, but rather about the red wolf. Could it be that this citation was intended for another section and somehow got misplaced?

The first one is a matter of fact summary of the gentic evidence that the Eastern Coyote is a coywolf and all about it. I can't read the whole thing, but it doesn't seem to say that there is any big debate about it.

Please explain how this statement may be rightly cited to these two articles soon. Otherwise, I think I'll delete them, although it would be a shame to lose the references as they could be used to cite something else about these animals, but I can't see them being used to claim that there is debate about the genetic facts about the Eastern "Coyote", which is to maybe quite varying degrees, a coywolf. Chrisrus (talk) 20:56, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

As far as I've seen, there does seem to be a species inclusion bias on how they include these eastern coywolves. Personally I believe that both the Eastern wolves and the Eastern coyotes are in a way the same type of coywolves. But apparently the Eastern wolves have been included in the list of Grey wolf subspecies but are still considered a hybrid species descended between the Great Plains wolf (a subspecies of the Grey Wolf) and the extinct Pre-Columbian coyotes (well, at least the pure Pre-Columbian coyotes are extinct but their DNA still exists in the Eastern wolves and the Eastern coyotes). It's also theorized that the Eastern Coyotes are also said to be descended from these two animals as well but are not included in the list of Grey wolf subspecies since the degree of Grey wolf in them is less than 50% while in the Eastern coyote the Grey wolf DNA makes up 60% of the wolf. http://www.easterncoyoteresearch.com/ Pretty much, I'm open to the possibility that they are either coywolves or used to be coywolves but are slowly becoming their own unique species. On a scale of wolf and coyote content of the three most popular alledged coywolves, I say the Eastern wolves have the most Grey wolf in them possibly due to the coywolves (Grey wolves and coyote hybrids) from long ago back-crossing with the Grey wolves. The Eastern coyotes on the other hand back-crossed with other coyotes thus they have more coyote in them and less Grey wolf. The Red wolves on the other hand fall in between both of those two "hybrid species" having less wolves than the Eastern wolves but also less wolves than the Eastern coyotes, putting them on a more balance scale. Of course, until more conclusive research in the scientific community brings this debate to a common ground, all of this is just theory based on DNA findings. There is also some groups theorizing that the Mexican wolves may also be coywolves as well as seen in one chupacabra case

- nosferatuslayer — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nosferatuslayer (talk • contribs) 17:06, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

89% wolf, but still "on balance a coyote"?
How is an animal which is almost 90% wolf "...on balance a coyote"? Chrisrus (talk) 17:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes female coywolves in the wild are mistaken for pure coyotes due to their size and when seen hanging with other coywolves with mostly coyote in their genes. Also, some of the eastern Grey wolf subspecies such as the Labrador wolf native to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador are much smaller than the more common pure wolves in the western regions of North America. And when a small subspecies like a Labrador wolf or a Mexican grey wolf breeds with an F1 coywolf, the offspring may get mistaken as a coyote depending on how much of the phenotype it inherits from its parents. Perhaps that 89% grey wolf content coywolf may have been caught mistakenly and then they decided to observe its DNA anyways. Nosferatuslayer (talk) 02:38, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Red Wolf
Current genetic research and evidence does not point to a conclusive absolute that red wolves are in fact a coywolf. There are most certainly red wolf - coywolf mixes in the wild and captivity, but it had not been conclusively proven that the entire species is a hybrid. I propose writing the article in a more unbiased language.Tampasteve (talk) 14:46, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Since no one else seems to be reading I am going to make the changes. If anyone disputes we can discuss before new changes are made. Tampasteve (talk) 13:54, 6 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Please if you would do have a look at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life and comment as you would. I will add an opposite message there. Chrisrus (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

At the moment there is actually no conclusive evidences to prove that the red wolves are a distinct wolf species despite the many claims. One of the many challenges to trying to conclude if a certain population is truly a distinct species or just a hybrid is the fact that some species such as the grey wolf and the coyotes have multiple subspecies in every different region where they are found as a result of adaptations. The problem in there is the fact that every different grey wolf and coyote subspecies has certain regions in their haplotypes that make the genetically distinct from other subspecies especially in populations that no longer overlap with the ranges of another subspecies as it had happened to the Mexican Grey wolves, even when they are technically still the same species as the wolves in the northwest. When it comes to the red wolves especially the population that was extracted from Texas, one major factor that some have questioned about the so-called Canis rufus rufus, particularly the population that was extracted from Texas. This is due in part to the fact that the Texas grey wolves Canis lupus monstrabilis, a subspecies of the grey wolves that was said to be closely related to the Mexican grey wolves Canis lupus baileyi whom some have also crossbred with coyotes, had died out years before the Texas red wolves were discovered and taken from the wild and brought into those recovery programs. A study that was conducted on the genetics of the Mexican grey wolves showed the presence of coyote haplotypes in some of the wolves as well as male grey wolf Y-chromosomes found in some of the Texas coyotes. This study made the conclusion that at some point in time when the Mexican grey wolves were nearly wiped out in the wild, some of the males of the depleted populations began to seek potential mates in the female coyotes and that the female Coywolf hybrids later on backcrossed with other male wolves reintroduced from their captive recovery programs while the males may have backcrossed with other coyotes in Texas - a factor that may hint that the original Texas red wolves were in fact Coywolves who may have either come from hybrids between the remnant Texas Grey wolves or the Mexican wolves that hybridized with the Canis latrans texensis.

By now, all of the existing red wolves, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA have been shown to have much of their genes derived from coyotes and only between 20% to 24% of their genetics are from the grey wolf in comparison to the Eastern wolves in the northeastern regions who have 58% of their genes derived from the grey wolves (specifically the population in Ontario) while the remaining 42% comes from an extinct Pre-Columbian eastern coyote population that once lived in the east before the western coyotes arrived in the east. While the extact cause of the original eastern coyotes' extinction is currently unknown, hybridizations with the grey wolves coupled with possible persecution which may have occurred during the viking settlement may have been what wiped out the pure animals of both species and only the hybrid Coywolves survived.

The extinction of the Texas grey wolves coupled with the red wolves that were taken from that state much later suggests that the Texas red wolves were hybrids between both the Texas plains coyotes and (possibly some extinct subspecies of) the grey wolves like the Texas grey wolves. The 5% of the mitochondrial haplotypes taken from some of the captive red wolves that appears to be "distinct" from both species is often called into question because many geneticists who have studied the canine genetics know that all grey wolf and coyotes subspecies have certain regions of their genes distinct from other subspecies as I mentioned above and those distinct haplotypes may be from either the extinct grey wolf subspecies or even an extinct coyote population as that seems to be the case for the latter with the Eastern wolves. For the Mississippi Valley Red wolves, that population is believed by some to have originated between some 200 years when much of the eatern US was being converted to agricultural landscape and the grey wolves and other wild carnivores who were deemed as threat to both humans and livestocks were targetted. The remnant populations would then be forced to interbreed with the coyotes that migrated in from the southwest. Sadly, this population also went extinct in the wild and the ones that were captured and sent into those red wolf recovery programs have by now crossbred with the captive Texas population and these Coywolves which are a mixed between both populations have been reintroduced into North Carolina. A third population being the Florida black wolves may have also been Coywolves that were closely related to the red wolves but unfortunately this population was wiped out before it could be properly studied. However, this population also sometimes overlapped with some of the former Eastern wolf ranges which opens up rooms for speculation that they may have been descended from the Coywolves that migrated down from eastern Canada. Though for now the exact origin of the Florida black wolf remains a mystery.

But in another side note, when a hybrid population has been long separated from the pure animals of their parent species for many generations, they start to develop certain regions of their DNA that is unique from the parents species. Also because domestic dogs that have gone feral for many years are also known to have hybridized with some of the southern coyotes and the fact that all of the different domestic breeds have certain genetic patterns that are distinct from other dog breeds (even though all of domestic dogs have been lumped together as part of one Canis lupus familiaris subspecies), it may also be possible that some of these unique genetic regions may have originated through isolation from the pure wolves and coyotes as with the case with the Eastern wolves or they could have come feral dogs. So at present, while the debate on whether or not the red wolves are a unique wolf species or a hybrid between grey wolves (as well as dogs) and coyote is still ongoing and will probably continue for many years from now. But we do know that grey wolves and coyotes have hybridized in areas where the former has been depleted by persecution and we also know that Coywolves often backcross with their parent species in areas where their ranges overlap such as near the Great Lake region. 99.235.74.54 (talk) 03:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Ok, but what does that mean in terms of this article/others? Also, please see Hybrid species. Chrisrus (talk) 15:03, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Are coywolves sterile?
I'm sure this has been determined in the course of studying these hybrids. I don't have any background in lupine biology so I wouldn't know where to start looking for papers that answer this question, but surely they're out there, and IMHO deserve mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.3.44.127 (talk) 21:07, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * No, they are not sterile. Is that not clear from the article?  If you can read this article and not get that answer, perhaps it should be edited to clarify this.  If you are looking for papers about coywolves, please check the references of this article or search Google Scholar for the word "coywolf" or "Eastern coyote". Chrisrus (talk) 05:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)