Impacts of Domestic Dog Exposure on Pennsylvania Coyotes’ (Canis latrans) Genetic Structure, Diversity, and Disease Regulatory Genes, Catalina Posada, UG '25 (B9F9B308)
Goal: Coyote (Canis latrans) range expansion has potential gene flow repercussions as coyotes come into increased contact with domestic dogs. Pennsylvania has great county-level variation in populations of domestic dogs, thus providing an appropriate context in which to study the differential effects of levels of domestic dog exposure on the coyote genome.
Methods: Sampling from 10 high dog density and 11 low dog density Pennsylvania counties, 173 coyotes were genotyped for single nucleotide polymorphisms. Population structure, genetic diversity, and genome wide association study tools were used to draw insights about the effects of differential exposure to domestic dogs.
Results: Population structure analyses revealed that coyotes from low and high dog density counties represent genetically distinct clusters. Moreover, HWE analyses highlight that coyotes from high domestic dog density counties have more SNPs out/more SNPs more extremely out of HWE due to heterozygosity deficit than do coyotes from low density regions. 18 SNPs were found to be associated with the trait differences; 10 of them exhibiting lower heterozygosity in the high-density group. Findings suggest that exposure to domestic dogs seems to have gene flow impacts on select SNPs’ heterozygosity and associated metabolic functions for coyotes, which may have subsequent effects on disease development in coyotes.