“Golden jackal” was the name given to a doglike species thought to populate much of East Africa and Eurasia, but it turns out the species is actually two.
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The new study, led by Koepfli and senior author Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the UCLA College, was inspired by recent reports suggesting that the African golden jackal was actually a subspecies of gray wolf.
The discovery, which is based on DNA evidence, increases the diversity of the biological family Canidae – the group including dogs, wolves, foxes, and jackals – from 35 living species to 36. Those studies were based on an analysis restricted to mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along via the maternal lineage.
Regarding this study Gaubert says that it is high-quality work, but he stands by his original paper since he is not yet convinced that the African golden jackal is an entirely new species. They then compared them with DNA samples taken from golden jackals in other parts of Africa and Eurasia.
The African golden jackal was wrongfully associated with existing species of wolves, but researchers claim they represent a distinct species which originated in Eurasia. He and Koepfli are calling the new creature the African golden wolf. He has further stated that the comparison of various DNA sequences belonging to different species of canids from Africa and Europe have revealed that the African golden jackal is a totally distinct species with its separate evolution.
Researchers believe the two species had been mistakenly viewed as one because of the high degree of similarity of their skull and tooth morphology.
Furthermore, Koepfli notes, “One of the main takeaways of our study is that even among well-known and widespread species such as golden jackals, there is the potential to discover hidden biodiversity, and that such discoveries are made even more possible by using data sampled from whole genomes”.
The researchers determined that the African golden jackal lineage split from the lineage including gray wolves and coyotes about 1.3 million years ago while the Eurasian golden jackal lineage split about 600,000 years earlier.
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The research was supported by the Russian Ministry of Science, the National Geographic Society, CIBIO, Project “Genomics Applied to Genetic Resources, ” the National Science Foundation, and the European Community Framework Program.
