S 11 Comparison of Golden Jackal Sample to Jackals and Wolves

Recent reports have indicated that some North African golden jackals possess gray wolflike mitochondrial DNA sequences [1,2]. The authors have suggested that those individuals may represent a previously undescribed gray wolf lineage present in North Africa, thus supporting previous claims based on the usual morphology and size of some canid specimens from this region [3]. Conceivably, the recent divergence estimated with G-PhoCS between golden jackals and gray wolves/dogs compared to previous estimates [4] could be due to a presence of wolf-like individuals in Israel rather than the more basal golden jackal lineage [5]. However, the mitochondrial DNA of the sequenced jackal was not wolf-like (unpublished results) and critically, analysis of previously published SNP data suggest Israeli golden jackals, including the specimen used in this paper, represent a lineage distinct from those in North Africa (Figure S11.1). Also, an analysis of 25 exonic sequences (16,180 bp) across a large panel of over 150 jackals from outside Africa did not indicate close proximity to the gray wolf / dog clade (Koepfli et al. unpublished data). The divergence time of wolves and golden jackals has been estimated as about 1.5 million years from fossil data [4]. The molecular data presented here and results in preparation suggest a much more recent divergence time, indicating that fossil remains thought to be golden jackals are not directly ancestral to living forms. The difficult of deducing affinities of a generalized canid such as the golden jackal are exemplified by the problems in assigning recent specimens to one species or another [3].