A new study outlines the ways by which city life may be shaping the evolution of urban coyotes, the highly adaptable carnivores spotted in alleyways from Berkeley, Calif., to the Bronx, in New York.
Historically, evolution was thought to occur on vast chronological scales. But scientists now understand that evolution can happen within just a few generations. Urban areas offer a unique glimpse into how evolution functions on smaller timescales and how species adapt to human presence and novel environments. Some species, like coyotes, seem particularly well suited to living alongside humans.
“Coyotes are doing really well in urban spaces,” said Elizabeth Carlen, a postdoctoral fellow with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of a study in Genome Biology and Evolution.
“Given the close evolutionary relationship between coyotes and domestic dogs, we leveraged the dog genome to think about what genes could be under selection in urban areas and how they might be changing,” Carlen said.
“For coyotes in particular, the ecological differences between urban and rural individuals have been well characterized,” said Samantha Kreling, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, first author of the new study. “However, while we know that genetic and ecological differences exist, few studies have looked at specific genes or the genome regions that may be affected. In our study, we present candidate genes to investigate for adaptive evolution in urban coyotes.”
The candidate gene approach involves researchers identifying particular genes of interest to sequence and compare. While whole-genome and epigenome sequencing are the gold standard for understanding evolutionary change and adaptation, these methods can be cost-prohibitive — especially for wildlife-focused budgets, Carlen explained.
For studies with limited budgets, targeting specific candidate genes for sequencing can allow testing of hypotheses while maintaining sufficient sample sizes to have statistical power. Carlen and Kreling’s new study provides examples of life history traits that may be under selection in urban coyotes as well as a list of candidate genes that have the potential to be implicated — including genes related to diet, health, thermoregulation, behavior, cognition and reproduction.