Human-modified canids in human-modified landscapes: The evolutionary consequences of hybridization for grey wolves and free-ranging domestic dogs

Introgressive hybridization between domestic animals and their wild relatives is an indirect form of human-induced evolution, altering gene pools and phenotypic traits of wild and domestic populations. Although this process is well documented in many taxa, its evolutionary consequences are poorly understood. In this study, we assess introgression patterns in admixed populations of Eurasian wolves and free-ranging domestic dogs (FRDs), identifying chromosomal regions with significantly overrepresented hybrid ancestry and assessing whether genes located within these regions show signatures of selection. Although the dog admixture proportion in West Eurasian wolves (2.7%) was greater than the wolf admixture proportion in FRDs (0.75%), the number and average length of chromosomal blocks showing significant overrepresentation of hybrid ancestry were smaller in wolves than FRDs. In wolves, 6% of genes located within these blocks showed signatures of positive selection compared to 23% in FRDs. We found that introgression from wolves may provide a considerable adaptive advantage to FRDs, counterbalancing some of the negative effects of domestication, which can include reduced genetic diversity and excessive tameness. In wolves, introgression from FRDs is mostly driven by drift, with a small number of positively selected genes associated with brain function and behaviour. The predominance of drift may be the consequence of small effective size of wolf populations, which reduces efficiency of selection for weakly advantageous or against weakly disadvantageous introgressed variants. Small wolf population sizes result largely from human-induced habitat loss and hunting, thus linking introgression rates to anthropogenic processes. Our results imply that maintenance of large population sizes should be an important element of wolf management strategies aimed at reducing introgression rates of dog-derived variants.

Automated summary

The study reveals that introgressive hybridization between wolves and free-ranging domestic dogs can impact gene pools and phenotypic traits, with free-ranging domestic dogs being more influenced by wolf introgression. This introgression may provide an adaptive advantage to free-ranging domestic dogs, but is mainly driven by drift in wolves.