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Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans

Coyotes are ubiquitous on the North American landscape as a result of their recent expansion across the continent. They have been documented in the heart of some of the most urbanized cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Here, we explored the genomic composition of 16 coyotes in...

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Autores principales: Caragiulo, Anthony, Gaughran, Stephen J., Duncan, Neil, Nagy, Christopher, Weckel, Mark, vonHoldt, Bridgett M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9498729/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36140828
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes13091661
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author Caragiulo, Anthony
Gaughran, Stephen J.
Duncan, Neil
Nagy, Christopher
Weckel, Mark
vonHoldt, Bridgett M.
author_facet Caragiulo, Anthony
Gaughran, Stephen J.
Duncan, Neil
Nagy, Christopher
Weckel, Mark
vonHoldt, Bridgett M.
author_sort Caragiulo, Anthony
collection PubMed
description Coyotes are ubiquitous on the North American landscape as a result of their recent expansion across the continent. They have been documented in the heart of some of the most urbanized cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Here, we explored the genomic composition of 16 coyotes in the New York metropolitan area to investigate genomic demography and admixture for urban-dwelling canids in Queens County, New York. We identified moderate-to-high estimates of relatedness among coyotes living in Queens (r = 0.0–0.5) and adjacent neighborhoods, suggestive of a relatively small population. Although we found low background levels of domestic-dog ancestry across most coyotes in our sample (5%), we identified a male suspected to be a first-generation coyote–dog hybrid with 46% dog ancestry, as well as his two putative backcrossed offspring that carried approximately 25% dog ancestry. The male coyote–dog hybrid and one backcrossed offspring each carried two transposable element insertions that are associated with human-directed hypersociability in dogs and gray wolves. An additional, unrelated coyote with little dog ancestry also carried two of these insertions. These genetic patterns suggest that gene flow from domestic dogs may become an increasingly important consideration as coyotes continue to inhabit metropolitan regions.
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spelling pubmed-94987292022-09-23 Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans Caragiulo, Anthony Gaughran, Stephen J. Duncan, Neil Nagy, Christopher Weckel, Mark vonHoldt, Bridgett M. Genes (Basel) Article Coyotes are ubiquitous on the North American landscape as a result of their recent expansion across the continent. They have been documented in the heart of some of the most urbanized cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Here, we explored the genomic composition of 16 coyotes in the New York metropolitan area to investigate genomic demography and admixture for urban-dwelling canids in Queens County, New York. We identified moderate-to-high estimates of relatedness among coyotes living in Queens (r = 0.0–0.5) and adjacent neighborhoods, suggestive of a relatively small population. Although we found low background levels of domestic-dog ancestry across most coyotes in our sample (5%), we identified a male suspected to be a first-generation coyote–dog hybrid with 46% dog ancestry, as well as his two putative backcrossed offspring that carried approximately 25% dog ancestry. The male coyote–dog hybrid and one backcrossed offspring each carried two transposable element insertions that are associated with human-directed hypersociability in dogs and gray wolves. An additional, unrelated coyote with little dog ancestry also carried two of these insertions. These genetic patterns suggest that gene flow from domestic dogs may become an increasingly important consideration as coyotes continue to inhabit metropolitan regions. MDPI 2022-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9498729/ /pubmed/36140828 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes13091661 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Caragiulo, Anthony
Gaughran, Stephen J.
Duncan, Neil
Nagy, Christopher
Weckel, Mark
vonHoldt, Bridgett M.
Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans
title Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans
title_full Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans
title_fullStr Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans
title_full_unstemmed Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans
title_short Coyotes in New York City Carry Variable Genomic Dog Ancestry and Influence Their Interactions with Humans
title_sort coyotes in new york city carry variable genomic dog ancestry and influence their interactions with humans
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9498729/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36140828
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes13091661
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