The golden jackals of East Africa and Eurasia may have a remarkable resemblance to one another, but DNA evidence has revealed that the two are actually different species.
The findings, which were published in the journal Current Biology on Thursday, now adds another number to the Canidae group, which includes dogs, foxes, wolves and jackals, increasing the total number of living species in the group from 35 to 36.
The two populations of the golden jackals appear similar in body size, teeth, head shape, color of the fur and wolf-like build. Both also thrive across a range of habitats from Africa's dry Savannas to Southeast Asia's tropical forests. They are omnivorous as well feeding on a variety of food ranging from fruits to small mammals.
The researchers, however, said that the two population split over one million years ago, which is enough to formally recognize them as two entirely different species.
"Our results showed that African and Eurasian golden jackals were distinct across all the genetic markers we tested, including data from whole genomes, suggesting these are independently evolving lineages," said study researcher Klaus-Peter Koepfli, from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
Based on genetic analyses, the researchers learned that the African golden jackals are more closely related to grey wolves regardless of the fact that no grey wolves are found in Africa and even though the African golden jackals and grey wolves look dramatically different.
The study was inspired by earlier reports that suggest the African golden jackal is a cryptic subspecies of grey wolves, the evidence of which was based on an analysis of the mitochondrial DNA that is passed along through the maternal linage.
For their study, Koepfli and colleagues examined DNA samples of golden jackals and the genome-wide DNA evidence revealed the evolutionary past of the canids.
"Consistent with two previous studies also based on mitochondrial sequences, we find that golden jackals from Africa and Eurasia are NOT each other's closest relative as we would expect if they were the same species," Koepfli said. "In fact, golden jackals from different localities in Africa share a more recent common ancestry with gray wolves."
Based on the results of the study, the authors proposed that the African golden jackal be renamed to the African golden wolf, or Africa Canis anthus. The scientific name for the golden jackal is Canis aureus.
"We demonstrate a striking morphologic similarity between East African and Eurasian golden jackals, suggesting parallelism, which may have misled taxonomists and likely reflects uniquely intense interspecific competition in the East African carnivore guild," the researchers wrote.
Photo: Soumyajit Nandy | Flickr
