Guest Essay by Kip Hansen —16 April 2024

Having survived the United States’s Tax Day, I am freed up to cover the Darwinian Story of the Day, complete with “Just-So story” elements that accompany almost every such bit of news. 

I have written about coyotes more than once.  “The coyote (Canis latrans) is a species of canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the gray wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf.”   [ wiki ]

So, what’s new on the Coyote Trail?:   a ‘new’ problem: Speciation Reversal – well, sort of.

As most of us know, coyotes are fantastically adaptable – they can live almost anywhere they can find food – and ‘coyote food’ is nearly every- and any- thing small enough or slow enough to catch, alive or dead.  “Primarily carnivorous, its diet consists mainly of deer, rabbits, hares, rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, though it may also eat fruits and vegetables on occasion.” [ wiki ]  It is widely believed that urban and suburban coyotes [ .pdf ] also eat pet food left outside for cats and dogs as well as the domestic cats and smaller dogs themselves.  Coyotes are natural scavengers and will eat scraps and human garbage given the opportunity.

Where are coyotes found?  In North America, nearly everywhere:

I have re-colored the legend to highlight areas of expansion since the year 2000 (baby blue) – in the USA, expanding into Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina and eastern Massachusetts.  Notably, and worrisome to some ecologists, coyotes have, for the first time, been found in Panama and may be poised to cross the Darien Gap into South America.

So, what about Coyotes and Speciation Reversal?   Well, through the wonders modern DNA testing, it has been discovered that the long-thought-to-be mythical Coywolves (or Coydogs) are not only real, but these hybrids seem to be out-competing other coyote sub-species, at least east of the Mississippi River.

Coyote sub-species:

• Canis latrans cagottis (Mexican coyote)
• Canis latrans clepticus (San Pedro Martir coyote)
• Canis latrans dickeyi (Salvador coyote)
• Canis latrans frustror (southeastern coyote)
• Canis latrans goldmani (Belize coyote)
• Canis latrans hondurensis (Honduras coyote)
• Canis latrans impavidus (Durango coyote)
• Canis latrans incolatus (northern coyote)
• Canis latrans jamesi (Tiburón coyote)
• Canis latrans latrans (plains coyote)
• Canis latrans lestes (mountain coyote)
• Canis latrans mearnsi (Mearns coyote)
• Canis latrans microdon (Lower Rio Grande coyote)
• Canis latrans ochropus (California valley coyote)
• Canis latrans peninsulae (peninsula coyote)
• Canis latrans texensis (Texas plains coyote)
• Canis latrans thamnos (northeastern coyote)
• Canis latrans umpquensis (northwest coast coyote)
• Canis latrans vigilis (Colima coyote)

And this new (?) hybrid?   “A “coywolf” is the nickname given to eastern coyotes, a hybrid of wolves and coyotes that also contain a fair share of genes from domestic dogs. This remarkable canid mutt has enjoyed a population boom over the past century and can now be found in plains, parks, and back alleys across much of eastern North America.  ….  Known to scientists as eastern coyotes, there’s some heated disagreement about whether they can be considered a separate species. However, it is evident that this hybrid animal has some clear differences from both common coyotes (aka western coyotes), not to mention wolves and dogs.” [ source ]   A lot of media attention has been given to the coywolf over the last decade, including a long piece at The Conversation and even a PBS Nature episode, Meet the Coywolf.

According to Roland Kays, Research Professor at North Carolina State University and Scientist at NC Museum of Natural Sciences:

“New genetic tests show that all eastern coyotes are actually a mix of three species: coyote, wolf and dog. The percentages vary, dependent upon exactly which test is applied and the geographic location of the canine.  ….  Coyotes in the Northeast are mostly (60%-84%) coyote, with lesser amounts of wolf (8%-25%) and dog (8%-11%). Start moving south or east and this mixture slowly changes. Virginia animals average more dog than wolf (85%:2%:13% coyote:wolf:dog) while coyotes from the Deep South had just a dash of wolf and dog genes mixed in (91%:4%:5% coyote:wolf:dog). Tests show that there are no animals that are just coyote and wolf (that is, a coywolf), and some eastern coyotes that have almost no wolf at all.” [  Kays in source]

This is not to mention the “Red Wolf”, currently listed under the U.S. Endangered Species act, which was found through DNA testing in 2011:   “These results support the hypotheses that red wolves are closely related to coyotes, but somewhat divergent from them due to a history of limited admixture with gray wolves. Such historic admixture between gray wolves and coyotes was followed by extensive backcrossing to coyotes, as the source population of gray wolves disappeared in the American South and the Southeast.  ….  The implications of our results are that a component of the phenotypic distinction of red wolves may be attributed to historic hybridization of distinct populations of gray wolves and coyotes. It has been suggested that hybrids are not clearly protected under the ESA (O’Brien and Mayr 1991), especially hybrids between nonlisted entities (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1973). Since a critical aim of the red wolf recovery project is to maintain the introduced population free from hybridization (Hedrick and Fredrickson 2008), the rationale of the program may need reconsidering as the extant red wolves clearly derive from a process of admixture.” [ vonHoldt et al. 2011 ]  In short, the so-called Red Wolf is just a previous, fairly recent, hybrid between gray wolves and coyotes, and as a hybrid between two non-endangered species, is not  itself a species and should not be listed as an endangered species.

Coyotes are canids, wolves are canids, domestic dogs are canids.  They are very closely related canids….

There you see the three species – Dog, Grey Wolf, Coyote – all right there in the red box.  Given the opportunity, they interbreed and produce viable offspring.  The offspring of such cross-species breeding also interbreed and produce viable offspring.   That’s the old high school definition of a species: “A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. “  By that definition, domestic dogs, wolves, and coyotes are all just varieties of the same species, distinct in coloring, size, habits but all happily interbreeding producing fertile and successful offspring.

And the storied Coywolf?  And its more-than-kissing cousin, the Coydog?    According to Roland Kays (and many others) both are best classified as Eastern Coyotes.  ( Canis latrans (var.) ) However, others disagree. 

Oh, and the “Just-So story”? 

“We can estimate the date of the most recent hybridization events that created eastern coyotes by analyzing their genetic structure. Their DNA show that about 100 years ago, coyotes mated with wolves, and about 50 years ago with dogs. A century ago, wolf populations in the Great Lakes were at their nadir, living at such low density that some reproductive animals probably couldn’t find another wolf mate, and had to settle with a coyote.”  

To me, that sounds like a raunchy singles-bar joke….

Bottom Line:

1.  The Eastern Coyote is a cross-mixture – hybrid —  of grey wolf, coyote and domestic dog,  in differing percentages across its range, generally east of the Mississippi River in North America.  As this process continues, we are witnessing “species reversal” – the opposite of speciation – separate species recombining into one.

2.  Efforts to declare it a new species are misguided – the cross- and back-cross breeding continues in present time producing new recognizable varietal hybrids.

3.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already erroneously protects one wolf-coyote hybrid, the so-called Red Wolf, under the Endangered Species Act, at great expense in a hopeless effort to maintain a wild population of a hybrid animal that continues to hybridize itself in the wild by breeding with coyotes and domestic dogs

4.  Coywolves and Coydogs are simply different names for the same hybrid animals  that are variously  constituted mixtures of grey wolf–coyote –domestic dog genes.  There are differing varieties of these based on the percentage of DNA from each contributing species and local influences on behaviors and prey.

5.  In upstate New York, parents still threaten their children with “You make sure you get back home before dark or the coydogs’ll get ya”.

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Author’s Comment:

This would all be correctly labelled as “taxonomy” – what to name various animals and classify them in the Tree of Life.  And, normally, the rest of us – non-biologists and non-taxonomists – could not care less what is decided.

But in today’s world,  the declaration of some particular animal to be an ”endangered species” can have incredible large and far-reaching consequences. 

In New York state, coyotes can be hunted, at any hour day or night, from October 1 through March 31, without any bag limit.  One needs a hunting license.  There is a caveat:  ”Large coyotes (50+ pounds) have been reported in New York, but they are uncommon. Any canid 50 pounds or greater may be a wolf, wolf-hybrid, or domestic dog. New York law protects wolves from hunting or trapping. It is also illegal to indiscriminately shoot domestic dogs or wolf-hybrids. We have documented a few wolves and wolf hybrids over the last 20 years in New York.”    NY State seems to be ignorant that all Eastern Coyotes are wolf-coyote-dog hybrids. 

Note that opinions on Darwinian Species Theory vary widely.  Feel free to discuss it in comments.

Thanks for reading.

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