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Citation: Prüfer, Kay, et al. “The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains.” Nature 505.7481 (2014): 43-49.
Quartz has a quizzical piece up, which is useful for fleshing out the incoherency of some tendencies within conservation biology. It turns out that the large coyotes which have been expanding across the eastern United States as the forests have taken over abandoned farmlands (due to the shift of agricultural activity to the Midwest in the 20th century from New England and Mid-Atlantic). To no one’s surprise these coyotes are filling the niche of the timber wolves of yore, predating upon the white-tailed deer whose numbers have increased with the rewilding of the landscape. But there’s a twist in this tale:
…scientists have since discovered these super-sized coyotes are only about two-thirds coyote. About 10% of their genes belong to domestic dogs and a quarter comes from wolves, with which they hybridized as they moved east north of the Great Lakes.
…
Monzón says hybridization enabled eastern coyotes to adapt quickly to fill the niche left by wolves. In fact, areas with the highest densities of deer had coyotes with the greatest proportion of wolf in their genomes. “There was a very rich resource that was waiting to be exploited,” says Monzón. “They’ve done very well here.”
So what’s the problem? As observed later in the piece our own species is to some extent a compound of diverged lineages. This pattern of reticulated ancestry is as old as evolutionary process itself. The “tree” metaphor was simply a stylized fact which elided detail so we could get to the heart of the matter in attempting to understand in our bones what common descent entailed. But supposedly there are rumblings:
Some scientists and conservationists see the coywolf as a nightmare of the Anthropocene—a poster child of mongrelization as plants and animals reshuffle in response to habitat loss, climate change and invasive species.
I am curious about any scientist that would use the term “mongrelization.” Name the scientists. It strikes me that a ghost-strawman is being set up here. But I’m willing to be proven wrong.
The reality is that many biologists have had issues with the biological species concept as an idealized and Platonic ideal, as opposed to an instrumental concept. Plant biologists have never had much truck with a strict form of the biological species concept, and how exactly does it to apply to asexual organisms? Our public policy has been built on a narrow conception of biological purity which only holds in a small slice of the tree of life, and even there it is violated constantly. Our own species is here as proof of that.
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When I was a boy growing up in the 50’s in northeast rural Massachusetts, everyone knew about coydogs, the coyote-dog hybrid. But I never saw one, and I assume they existed farther north in New Hampshire and Maine.
Coyotes and their hybrids now occupy inner cities, not just forests and farmland. Inner city Chicago may have as many as 2,000 coyotes, and expanding. The city is rich source of shelter and waste food:
http://senr.osu.edu/our-people/stanley-d-gehrt
There used to be a guy in Knox Co., Ohio, that bred 50/50 wolves and German shepherds. I have seen one of those while waiting in a tire store for new tires. It seemed well-behaved.
Species are genres.
Interracial breeding: two legs good, four legs bad?
The case of extant humans is a bit different to wolves. As I understand it coyotes can’t maintain (get killed) themselves within the geographical range of wolves, so that is already a kind of an indication they are not much different taxonomically. Pure coyotes are primarily hunters of rodents. Humans quickly exterminated wolves so the wolf genes adapted to bringing down deer, had nowhere to go but into coyotes. hence the Eastern Coyotes which look like a small- boned German Shepherd, but are a lot more physically capable (a study found one pair killed an 800lb moose). Anyway, human hatred of wolves is the main reason for expansion of coywolves, which would be a unviable population in the transition zone between the ranges.
Humans became a species after mixing with other lineages, by exterminating those closely related linages. To become a true species wolves would have had to have exterminated coyotes. If they had made coyotes disappear, then wolves would be a species in the same sense as modern humans currently are.
there's no coherent species definition. what do you mean by true species?Replies: @Sean
Well I’m somewhat afraid of them. I have three children that could get eaten. Part of my backyard is a forest filled with white-tailed deer.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with them from an ecological point of view (they are filling a niche that no other animal can) but from the point of view of being a good parent I’m not a fan of them.
Meanwhile in Canada we’re having a wolf cull because of their massive population growth lol.
Humans became a species after mixing with other lineages, by exterminating those closely related linages. To become a true species wolves would have had to have exterminated coyotes. If they had made coyotes disappear, then wolves would be a species in the same sense as modern humans currently are.Replies: @Razib Khan
To become a true species wolves would have had to have exterminated coyotes.
there’s no coherent species definition. what do you mean by true species?
I remember reading Frontier Farewell: The 1870s and the End of the Old West by Garett Wilson, about the settling of the Canadian West. He praised the vigor of Metis (=’mixed’ in French, cognate with Sp. ‘Mestizo’), but wrote unhappily about how post-population crash bufflo breeding efforts have allowed domestic cattle gene to get into the buffalo population. After reading that, I was reminded of your earlier post on the topic. What so wrong with the ‘catufflo’? They’re just metis bovines, right?
The wilderness is supposed to be a museum. Wild animals and plants are its museum pieces.
Do conservation biologists actually have come to believe their own PR? We don’t really need red wolves or any kind of wolf for that matter. We also don’t need to “drive evolution”, improve coyotes (Why not go full GMO?) or maintain “biodiversity”.
Wildlife conservation is based on our own sentimentality. So this hybrid coyote vs. red wolf question has to be decided based on how it fits our intuitive conservationist sensibility. I say let’s get rid of the mongrels if possible.
P.S.: GSS variables: natenvir, visnhist, visart, vissci.
Interesting. Seems to me that coyotes have successfully remained viable in the 48 states precisely because they are small, solitary, and, well, un-wolf-like. Obviously wolves did not fare as well in the lower 48. Not exactly sure why. Maybe wolf packs need larger natural habitats to survive than coyotes. Perhaps they were hunted more vigorously by trappers.
If that’s right, then I suppose that insofar as coywolves retain the solitary nature of coyotes that allowed them to coexist with humans (maybe there are other advantages? I think they have higher birth rate), then adding some extra size wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe even good, now that wolves are displaced but deer are increasingly abundant (I think).
I wonder if the dog genes are not helping them adapt to living close to humans. Regular reports now of them living right in Chicago.
In contrast, some years ago in Wisconsin, my wife and infant son were confronted in the woods by some kind of large wolf-coyote hybrid that had a wolf's swagger. It was pretty scary.
If that's right, then I suppose that insofar as coywolves retain the solitary nature of coyotes that allowed them to coexist with humans (maybe there are other advantages? I think they have higher birth rate), then adding some extra size wouldn't be so bad. Maybe even good, now that wolves are displaced but deer are increasingly abundant (I think).Replies: @Tom Bri, @Steve Sailer
Eastern coyotes are not particularly solitary. I can go outside almost any night and listen to the packs yip and howl at each other, an hour outside of Chicago. These are fairly large dogs, about the size of a smaller german shepherd. Definitely could be dangerous, if they were more aggressive. Fortunately they seem not to be.
I wonder if the dog genes are not helping them adapt to living close to humans. Regular reports now of them living right in Chicago.
“This pattern of reticulated ancestry is as old as evolutionary process itself”.
And probably responsible in large part for evolution itself.
Coyotes and their hybrids now occupy inner cities, not just forests and farmland. Inner city Chicago may have as many as 2,000 coyotes, and expanding. The city is rich source of shelter and waste food:
http://senr.osu.edu/our-people/stanley-d-gehrt
There used to be a guy in Knox Co., Ohio, that bred 50/50 wolves and German shepherds. I have seen one of those while waiting in a tire store for new tires. It seemed well-behaved.Replies: @Twinkie
Well, looks can be deceiving. I saw and observed (but never handled) “Timber-Shepherds” (wolf-German Shepherd hybrid) in the past. The problem is that it’s not always 50-50 (even with equal “input”). Some offspring can show A LOT more wolf traits, and you don’t find out until the wolf unpredictability shows up as they age. Dogs are attuned to human emotions and body language, because they co-evolved with us, with mutual feedback. They are still “puppy-like” as adults. Wolves are not. Even the seemingly tame wolves can turn on humans in an instant once they mature. With hybrids, you do not know what you are getting.
If that's right, then I suppose that insofar as coywolves retain the solitary nature of coyotes that allowed them to coexist with humans (maybe there are other advantages? I think they have higher birth rate), then adding some extra size wouldn't be so bad. Maybe even good, now that wolves are displaced but deer are increasingly abundant (I think).Replies: @Tom Bri, @Steve Sailer
Coyotes in Los Angeles are solitary and furtive-looking. They scare easily and thus aren’t that much of a problem.
In contrast, some years ago in Wisconsin, my wife and infant son were confronted in the woods by some kind of large wolf-coyote hybrid that had a wolf’s swagger. It was pretty scary.
there's no coherent species definition. what do you mean by true species?Replies: @Sean
Well I suppose a true species is distinct and has no extant species it can breed with. If Neanderthals were still around humans would be fertile with them. Neanderthals might be fertile with species that modern humans could not be fertile with. If a few extinct Hominidae in the human family tree were still around modern humans could be fertile with some thing that could be fertile with something that could be fertile with a chimp. It would then be permissible to put chimps and humans in the same species. But humans and then modern humans outcompeted preyed on, or made war on other paleontological species and exterminated them. So modern humans are in the aforementioned sense a true species in a way that wolves are not. But not if you count paleontological species admittedly.
this is just an extreme form of http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_species_concept by this condition there are very few plant species.
also, it's circular. you just defined a species in reference to species.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous
Well I suppose a true species is distinct and has no extant species it can breed with.
this is just an extreme form of http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_species_concept by this condition there are very few plant species.
also, it’s circular. you just defined a species in reference to species.
this is just an extreme form of http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_species_concept by this condition there are very few plant species.
also, it's circular. you just defined a species in reference to species.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous
Well OK, the biological species concept only really fits the species that came up with it. However, the biological species concept allows for a very wide range of interbreeding stocks (what Kant called Realgattungen) to fit an extreme form of the biological species concept. EG chimps and humans into the same species if certain extinct hominin were still around.
Chimps and humans, and only chimps and humans, make war. So I was trying to suggest that what stock of the Realgattungen kills off the other stocks is more important than what can mate with what .
this is just an extreme form of http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_species_concept by this condition there are very few plant species.
also, it's circular. you just defined a species in reference to species.Replies: @Sean, @Anonymous
I don’t think this definition is circular. It does (as do other definitions) make the classification of organisms messier than we’d like (e.g., lots of subspecies, species that can produce viable offspring with a different species at a very low frequency, and so on), and there are many instances in which the categories that emerge from this definition do not match the intuitive categories we tend to form over time; however, I don’t think it’s circular. The statement that “a true species is distinct and has no extant species it can breed with” implies that if a set of organisms cannot produce viable offspring with organisms outside that set, then that set qualifies as a “species.” I think it’s pretty easy to argue that this definition is inadequate for a thorough, “clean” categorization of life on the planet, but I don’t see anything circular about it. You start with a “set” and then classify that set as being or not being a species based on its interactions with organisms not included in the set.
@Sean:
I believe your original definition of "true species" is not based on the mere ability to breed, but on likely breeding in a hypothetical world without humans. That's the way to go from a conservationist perspective.
Indeed, “daisies” being a case in point that everyone is familiar with. The family Asteraceae had something like 25,000 different species when most botanists gave up counting. My wife took a sample of some tiny little 1/2 inch ones that were growing in our back garden like the wildflower/weeds that they are to a local professor in order to have him identify them. He just laughed and said that they were “unidentified daisy-like” flowers or UDFs. They are actually each a composite of different flowers for the head and petals (hence their original family name Compositae) and can cross pollinate so I don’t suppose the concept of “species” even applies.
One could dedicate one’s life to genetic analysis of every little white petaled plant there is but that way madness lies. Much better to just idly make daisy chains of them in the spring sunshine.
It’s a graph actually, which is a set of nodes and a set of edges. The nodes in your definition are all currently alive individuals. Two individuals are connected by an edge, if they can potentially breed. A species is a full subgraph. This definition does not provide a taxonomy of species though, which has to be done as a seperate graph of species.
:
I believe your original definition of “true species” is not based on the mere ability to breed, but on likely breeding in a hypothetical world without humans. That’s the way to go from a conservationist perspective.
ORLY?
Most canid packs will fight to the death if necessary and if I remember correctly so will troops of baboons and hyenas.
How could I have forgotten about meerkats? Not only do the little weasels kill each other in clan on clan battles but the alpha females routinely kill and eat lower ranked female’s kits in there own clan just as pregnant lower ranked females murder the unguarded alpha female’s kits if given half a chance.
Sean, you need to watch more Animal Planet.
Razib and Jacobite,
I’m a postdoctoral researcher in plant biology and I will second you: the biological species concept is terrible. Species can and do hybridize all the time, especially among plants. And when it comes to asexual organisms, how would you even possibly know?
Maybe one day we may be able to define species in terms of quantitative degrees of genetic difference, but until then it’s an instrumental concept rather than something real.
Don’t forget ants.
In the backyards of the neighborhood of my extremely distant youth we had two common types of ant hills, one with medium size black ants and the other with tiny red ants. My partners in crime and I would take a big shovelful of one kind and plop it right on top of the other kinds hill. Much mayhem occurred. One year we also put individual 17-year cicadas on top of these ant hills. Once when I told a psychiatrist this he immediately started taking copious notes.
I'm a postdoctoral researcher in plant biology and I will second you: the biological species concept is terrible. Species can and do hybridize all the time, especially among plants. And when it comes to asexual organisms, how would you even possibly know?
Maybe one day we may be able to define species in terms of quantitative degrees of genetic difference, but until then it's an instrumental concept rather than something real.Replies: @Jacobite
I find it sort of freaky/creepy that our chromosomes have sections of virus and bacteria DNA, although I don’t buy this fact as a valid argument in favor of unrestricted immigration.
The now-larger Eastern coyotes do not have “wolf” DNA; they have Red Wolf DNA, a rare species of the southeastern US long confined to an island off the SC coast. How the modern Eastern coyote got this mixture is not known, since the coyote populations came from the north and have moved southward.
There are clues, but certainly no proof, of artificial breeding to produce a successful modern predator. There is an abundance of evidence the mixture cannot have been natural.
All these artificial subspecies are just a hijacking of science by radical environmentalists in order to hammer logging (spotted owls anyone?), mining, freeway, and strip mall developers. Ever try and determine which "species" of sparrow is hanging around in the back yard? You can't 99% of the time. The subtle coloration differences are so minuscule that it is impossible. I bet every single flock of sparrows has some slightly different vocalizations too.
If like me, people are so damed concerned about conservation of the wilderness then they should be strict human immigration restrictionists and anti-natal zealots as the Sierra Club used to be rather than ginning up dubious scientific theories about speciation and getting them written into law.
There are clues, but certainly no proof, of artificial breeding to produce a successful modern predator. There is an abundance of evidence the mixture cannot have been natural.Replies: @Jacobite
I thought it had been proven that the whole “red wolf” wheeze was just another coyote cross with grey wolves. Also the “Florida panther” is just a population descended from a dozen pumas cut off from the rest of cougardom by human development outside of the Everglades.
All these artificial subspecies are just a hijacking of science by radical environmentalists in order to hammer logging (spotted owls anyone?), mining, freeway, and strip mall developers. Ever try and determine which “species” of sparrow is hanging around in the back yard? You can’t 99% of the time. The subtle coloration differences are so minuscule that it is impossible. I bet every single flock of sparrows has some slightly different vocalizations too.
If like me, people are so damed concerned about conservation of the wilderness then they should be strict human immigration restrictionists and anti-natal zealots as the Sierra Club used to be rather than ginning up dubious scientific theories about speciation and getting them written into law.
Predators prey upon their prey. Please tell me you made a typo and that biologists haven’t started using to predate as a verb meaning to prey. Haven’t they done enough to soil the language already?
If it wasn’t a slip how long has that usage been going on?
It seems I usually predate when writing the first check or two every January and have done so for years.