Saturday Science: Coywolf, Coydog, What?

Eastern coyote (Wikipedia Commons)

Interesting (well, for me, but I'm somewhat of a nature nerd) article on what has been called variously the "coywolf," "coydog," and "northeastern coyote," with an argument for naming it a new species:

Soon after, my colleague William Lynn (Marsh Institute, Clark University) and I published a meta-analysis in the scientific journal Canid Biology & Conservation that summarized recent studies on this creature and confirmed that what we call “coyotes” in northeastern North America formed from hybridization (the mating of two or more species) between coyotes and wolves in southern Ontario around the turn of the 20th century.

In the paper, we suggest that coywolf is the most accurate term for this animal and that they warrant new species status, Canis oriens, which literally means eastern canid in Latin. We based this on the fact that they are physically and genetically distinct from their parental species of mainly western coyotes (Canis latrans) and eastern wolves (Canis lycaon). They also have smaller amounts of gray wolf (Canis lupus) and domestic dog (Canis familiaris) genes.

Actually, the bulk of the article devoted to the statistical side (if I can call it that) of evolutionary biology and provides a good look at the way this sort of thing actually works.

Which some of us think is totally fascinating.