(1) This piece shows one of the ways in which some questions remain unsettled:
In the 18th century European naturalists dubbed the wolves of Canada and the eastern U.S. Canis lycaon, because they seemed distinct from Canis lupus, the gray wolf of Europe and Asia. By the early 1900s North American naturalists had decided that they were actually gray wolves as well. But in the past few years Canadian researchers who have analyzed wolf DNA have come full circle. They argue that gray wolves only live in western North America. The wolves of Algonquin Provincial Park belong to a separate species, which they want to call C. lycaon once more.
Other wolf experts do not think there is enough evidence to split C. lupus into two species. And both sides agree that the identity of the Algonquin wolves has become far more murky thanks to interbreeding. Coyotes (another species in the genus Canis) have expanded east and have begun to interbreed with C. lycaon. Now a sizable fraction of these eastern coyotes carry wolf DNA, and vice versa. Meanwhile C. lycaon has been interbreeding with gray wolves at the western border of its range. So the Algonquin animals are not just mixing C. lycaon DNA with C. lupus DNA—they are also passing on the coyote DNA as well.
(2) Re: yesterday’s column, it might be worth stressing that there’s a difference between teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory and injecting religion into the science classroom. Religious debates belong in religion classes. Scientific debates belong in the science classroom. Among the latter, for instance, are questions about the strengths and weaknesses of Gould’s notions about spandrels. That’s entirely different from saying that “some people believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and scientists don’t really know if that’s so.“ Scientists do, and it isn’t.
Reader Comments:
Bart wrote:
“Religious debates belong in religion classes.“
There are religion classes in Virginia’s public schools? Name one school with religion classes.
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