Maybe. The results you posted said a "potential F1." There are other possibilities such as an F2 from two F1 parents which will give you the same genetic makeup.



Hair samples will only give you the history as far back as the history of the individual hair goes, which may not span the entire life of the animal. Bone will give you a longer history. Carbon isotope studies do yield very insightful information. In this case, the distinction is based on the difference being that wolves in captivity NOT being fed natural typical diets. The confounding problem is when wolves in the wild eat human garbage such as from dumps which can provide misleading information as to the animal being in captivity.



This is an interesting argument, but melanism is tied to a genetic mutation and the melanistic phase in coyotes and wolves has actually been connected with breeding with domestic dogs. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19197024

Red wolves have been observed with black color phase as well.
https://books.google.com/books?id=_mXHuS...olf&f=false
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3670332?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Interesting stuff Tony. Back in the 80's in north central Texas we had government trappers come in to get wolves. Believe they trapped around 20 or 30 in a 5 county region. All were determined to be a x between a wolf/domestic cross with a coyote cross on the other side. Biologists said folks had bred pure wolves with domestic dogs, then let them loose as they were too wild. The hybrid then bred with coyotes. About 10 years ago I shot a "coyote" that weighed in at 65 pounds. Normally Texas totes max at 40-45. Game biologist said he was more that likely a tri-cross. Keep us up to date on latest findings!

Yes a local family had a cross, it went for a run one morning, and ended up in a photo just like the OP.

Double Naught Spy

When you do these types of analysis they rarely say anything is 100% because of all the variable that they cannot control, etc.

We can debate whether the animal is an F1 or cross between an F1 and an F2, regardless it's unique to find the this DNA make-up in VA so far from wolf populations (and red wolves are typically 50-80 pounds so this animal being 82 pounds makes a coyote x red wolf seem unlikely). A few quotes that I think makes this animal unique .. and I did not try too take them out of context. BTW, Melanism (like albino) occurs in most species... it is different than a black color phase.

From the researcher who did the actual DNA analysis at the Wayne Lab

"Yes, it is a coyote/wolf hybrid. What is striking is that it has the profile of a F1 hybrid, based on the very high proportion of heterozygous genotypes and approximately half coyote alleles and half wolf alleles at the coyote/wolf diagnostic loci. I am aware of the wolf ancestry in coyotes in this region, but this result is nonetheless unexpected."

"So far we can't say anything about what kind of wolf it's descended from. The D-loop haplotype sequence may shed light on this, but if turns out to be a coyote haplotype then it doesn't help answer this question. At that point we would have to come up with a different test to determine the type of wolf ancestry."

From the Professor at the NC Museum who also helped pioneer the analysis of bone & hair analysis to help indicate if the animal had a diet consistent with captivity. (http://www.academia.edu/2667025/Using_Stable_Carbon_Isotopes_to_Distinguish_Wild_from_Captive_Wolves)

"Wow, super interesting, a potential F1 Hybrid wolf-coyote from Virginia. This opens a lot of new questions! Perhaps the D-loop will shed some light on the origin of this wolf (if its mother was a wolf). We should probably run an isotope test on the bones/hair to see if there is evidence of captivity (i.e. eating dog food would show up). I'll contact a friend about getting that done."

"Tony, the average eastern coyote has a little bit of dog and a little bit of Wolf genes mixed in. The test on this animal shows that it has a massive amount of wolf genes, probably half of it's Genome. This suggest that one of its parents was a full-blooded wolf, that's what we mean by an F1 or first generation hybrid. This is highly unusual and makes us wonder where the wolf could have come from."

As an aside, why do I give a damn about this animals DNA?

Simple, I showed the picture to a friend who gave it to someone at the VA Dept of Game and Inland Fisheries. They circulated the pictures among a few of their experts and said it was not a coyote....did not look like a coyote....was too big to be a coyote...and it was someone's pet and that it was a dog. These are the same folks who decided to outlaw deer urine in VA because they think it could cause CWD, the same folks who refuse to publicly acknowledge (they skirt around the edges) that coyotes are impacting the deer herds in VA. But that's another story.

So, it's more or less to prove a point (the animal is a coyote or at least a coyote hybrid) .. and since I am retired I have time to screw around with this stuff. In the process I learned a lot about coyotes...so it was a learning experience. What I was actually hoping for was a result that was consistent with an Eastern Coyote....not one with so much wolf in the pedigree.

Would be interesting to find out who has permits for captive wolves in VA and if a captive bred wolf had something to do with him being an f1. If you have enough money and jump through enough hoops, legally and illegally, getting a pure wolf isn't extremely difficult. Read a story about a wolf killed in tx that was almost pure. After all the smoke cleared it was discovered to have escaped from a breeding pen but not reported by the breeders. I'll look for the story.

Clearly one of the parents being an "escaped/captive" wolf is a possibility. I think we can do a lot of "what if's" here.