The new method has been developed as an international collaboration, which included the University of Oulu. Luke and the University of Oulu have collaborated for a long time in large carnivore research.
A new method in wolf DNA research has revealed dog genes in animals that were previously considered wolves. In practice, the method has been able to identify canines classified as harmful alien species, i.e. crossbreeds between dogs and wolves.
The Natural Resources Center and the University of Oulu have been involved in the development of the method developed as an international collaboration. Professor Jouni Aspi from the University of Oulu says that the method was developed to specifically identify genetic differences between wolves and dogs.
According to the professor at the Research Institute of Ecology and Genetics, the old method failed to identify the second or third generation backcrosses as wolves, because the proportion of dogs in their inheritance had already decreased. No offspring of a pure dog and a wolf were found in the analyses, but the parents of the identified hounds were a wolf and a hound.
Wolf and dog crosses are very rare in Finland.
Mia Valtonen from the Natural Resources Center says that with the new method it has been possible to find three new wolf individuals that were not previously recognized as crossbreeds between dogs and wolves. Two of the finds were from Raasepor and one from Uustakaupunki.
None of the three canines are alive anymore. The wolf is defined as a harmful alien species in the Alien Species Act. According to the researchers, it is important to identify the crossings in order to protect the genetic purity of the wolf population.
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