![]() ![]() “We had very few black homozygote females that reproduced in our data, so it was not possible to estimate their fertility,” Professor Cubaynes told me in email.ĭo black homozygotes even survive to adulthood? “They represent less than 5% of the population in Yellowstone.” Professor Cubaynes is a Lecturer at the University of Montpellier, where she uses biostatistics to understand evolutionary and ecological changes in populations. ![]() “Black homozygotes are very uncommon,” explained lead author of the study, evolutionary ecologist Sarah Cubaynes, in email. Since then, this allele has undergone one of the most rapid spreads known for an adaptive gene variant amongst vertebrates ( ref).īoth homozygous KK and the heterozygous Kk individuals have black coats that are visually indistinguishable, but these two genotypes have very different fitness consequences ( ref). Previous work proposes that the black coat color allele was introduced into the North American wolf population just once, around 7,250 years ago, by dogs carrying the gene that accompanied people who migrated across the Bering Strait. However, a three-nucleotide deletion in the K locus gene results in a protein that prevents Agouti function, thereby creating the dominant inheritance of a black coat. One allele, the ancestral k allele, creates the normal Agouti coat color seen in grey wolves. The genetics of black pelage in wolvesĬoat color in wolves, Canis lupus, is determined by one of two gene variants, or alleles. This fascinating study indicates that coat color reflects an individual wolf’s immunity to the canine distemper virus (CDV), and further, observed changes in the proportion of black wolves in a population may be linked to the frequency of CDV disease outbreaks, combined with changes in the wolves’ mating behavior, particularly whether they select a mate with the same or a different coat color to their own. “We now have an explanation based on wolf surveys across North America, and modeling motivated by extraordinary data collected by co-authors who work in Yellowstone.” “Scientists have long wondered why”, Professor Coulson said in a statement. Professor Coulson’s research focuses on ecological and evolutionary impacts of environmental change on natural systems, and how different species and ecosystems respond to different types of environmental change. “In most parts of the world black wolves are absent or very rare, yet in North America they are common in some areas and absent in others”, said the study’s senior author, Tim Coulson, a Professor of Biology at the University of Oxford. (doi:10.1126/science.abi8745) doi:10.1126/science.abi8745Īn international team of scientists investigated this long-standing mystery. Circles are scaled to sample size (N = 1166). The thick black line is a restricted major axis regression weighted by sample size, and gray lines show the 95% bounds of the regression estimate. (C) Relationship between CDV prevalence and proportion of wolves with black coat color. Also shown are 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). (B) Proportion of pup, subadult, and adult wolves seropositive for CDV among N = 1134 with known age and sex from the wolf populations sampled in (A). YNP and GTNP are offset for visual purposes (n = 1274) (19). Wolf sampling locations included Alaska Peninsula (AK.PEN), Denali National Park (DENALI), interior Alaska (INT.AK), Yukon Charley Rivers National Preserve (YUCH), southeastern Alaska (SE.AK), British Columbia (BC), South Slave Northwest Territories (SS.NWT), Banff and Jasper National Parks (BAN.JAS), Yellowstone National Park (YNP), Grand Teton National Park (GTNP), Ontario (ONT), and Superior National Forest (SNF). F I G U R E 1 : Occurrence of CDV and coat color in wolves across North America. ![]()
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