Humans were not the only species that experienced a population boom after the development of farming - so did the recently described African wolf (Canis aureus lupaster). According to a recent study, the predators benefited from the influx of goats, sheep and other livestock introduced during the expansion in North Africa.
     For a long time, the African wolf was mistaken for the golden jackal (Canis aureus) and as such, knowledge of its biology and ecology is relatively scant. However, new research analyzing its DNA is attempting to explain how its population fluctuated over time.
     Scientists collected samples of DNA from individual wolves in Tunisia and Algeria, using genetic markers and patterns within the DNA to determine the species' demographic history. "The DNA molecule accumulates differences that occur in populations over time, and the amount of accumulated differences is related to several factors intrinsic to the species, for instance the generation length, but also to the size of the population," co-author Raquel Godinho, a principal researcher at the University of Porto in Portugal, said. "This means that past demographic changes have left a signature in the DNA of every species, and we can use this property to infer about population demography."
     The researchers identified two periods of possible population expansion. The first occurred roughly 50,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene, when several African mammals flourished as a result of favorable climate changes. The second coincided with the advent of farming approximately 5,000 years ago.
     The researchers argue the development of Neolithic technology, the start of farming and, in particular, the rise in domesticated animals created an opportunity for the opportunistic African wolf. "The availability of human-related resources, especially livestock, that emerged during the Neolithic revolution may have boosted population sizes of opportunistic wild species, supporting a favorable coexistence of humans and wild species in this period," said Godinho.
     "The findings are surprising compared with what we normally see for wild species, which tend to be threatened by agricultural activities," Frank Hailer, an evolutionary biologist at Cardiff University in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, said. "It is interesting to note that in the case of the African wolf, availability of livestock may have led to population increases in a wild predator", he added. "Going forward, increased sampling of individuals and perhaps more large-scale genomic methods could be used to confirm these results and to perhaps pick up on additional fine-scaled events," Heiler concluded.
     
Edited from Newsweek (22 January 2020)