Abstract

We present here an analysis of molecular genetic data for indigenous North American dogs consisting of 300 BP sequences of mitochondrial DNA from the D-loop of 3 extinct breeds: the Salish wool dog, the Northwest Coast 'village' or hunting dog, and the Tahltan bear dog. This indigenous dog DNA was compared to 718 BP sections of the D-loop from 4 wolf subspecies, red fox, coyote, and 11 breeds of contemporary (modern) dogs also sequenced for this study. Our canid dataset was combined with somewhat longer D-loop sequences of dogs and wolves from two recently published studies. Parsimony analysis of this expanded dataset identified only three major (well-supported) groups: fox, coyote and dog/wolf. A few groupings within the dog/wolf clade were discernible but poorly supported. We conclude that it is not possible to distinguish between breeds of dogs, or even between dogs and wolves, using mtDNA D-loop sequences. Several explanations are offered for these results, the most significant of which is that extensive introgression of dog mtDNA into wolf populations, due to both modern and past asymmetric hybridization events, may account for the similarities in DNA sequences.