Demographic history influences spatial patterns of genetic diversity in recently expanded coyote (Canis latrans) populations

Human-mediated range expansions have increased in recent decades and represent unique opportunities to evaluate genetic outcomes of establishing peripheral populations across broad expansion fronts. Over the past century, coyotes (Canis latrans) have undergone a pervasive range expansion and now inhabit every state in the continental United States. Coyote expansion into eastern North America was facilitated by anthropogenic landscape changes and followed two broad expansion fronts. The northern expansion extended through the Great Lakes region and southern Canada, where hybridization with remnant wolf populations was common. The southern and more recent expansion front occurred approximately 40 years later and across territory where gray wolves have been historically absent and remnant red wolves were extirpated in the 1970s. We conducted a genetic survey at 10 microsatellite loci of 482 coyotes originating from 11 eastern U.S. states to address how divergent demographic histories influ...