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The golden jackal of Africa (Canis aureus) has long been considered a
conspecific of jackals distributed throughout Eurasia, with the nearest
source populations in the Middle East. However, two recent reports found
that mitochondrial haplotypes of some African golden jackals aligned more
closely to gray wolves (Canis lupus), which is surprising given the
absence of gray wolves in Africa and the phenotypic divergence between the
two species. Moreover, these results imply the existence of a previously
unrecognized phylogenetically distinct species despite a long history of
taxonomic work on African canids. To test the distinct-species hypothesis
and understand the evolutionary history that would account for this
puzzling result, we analyzed extensive genomic data including
mitochondrial genome sequences, sequences from 20 autosomal loci (17
introns and 3 exon segments), microsatellite loci, X- and Y-linked
zinc-finger protein gene (ZFX and ZFY) sequences, and whole-genome nuclear
sequences in African and Eurasian golden jackals and gray wolves. Our
results provide consistent and robust evidence that populations of golden
jackals from Africa and Eurasia represent distinct monophyletic lineages
separated for more than one million years, sufficient to merit formal
recognition as different species: C. anthus (African golden wolf) and C.
aureus (Eurasian golden jackal). Using morphologic data, 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. Our study shows how ecology can confound taxonomy
if interspecific competition constrains size diversification.
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