Data from: Death by sex in an Australian icon: a continent-wide survey reveals extensive hybridization between dingoes and domestic dogs

Hybridization between domesticated animals and their wild counterparts can
disrupt adaptive gene combinations, reduce genetic diversity, extinguish
wild populations and change ecosystem function. The dingo is a
free-ranging dog that is an iconic apex predator and distributed
throughout most of mainland Australia. Dingoes readily hybridize with
domestic dogs, and in many Australian jurisdictions, distinct management
strategies are dictated by hybrid status. Yet, the magnitude and spatial
extent of domestic dog–dingo hybridization is poorly characterized. To
address this, we performed a continent-wide analysis of hybridization
throughout Australia based on 24 locus microsatellite DNA genotypes from
3637 free-ranging dogs. Although 46% of all free-ranging dogs were
classified as pure dingoes, all regions exhibited some hybridization, and
the magnitude varied substantially. The southeast of Australia was highly
admixed, with 99% of animals being hybrids or feral domestic dogs, whereas
only 13% of the animals from remote central Australia were hybrids. Almost
all free-ranging dogs had some dingo ancestry, indicating that domestic
dogs could have poor survivorship in nonurban Australian environments.
Overall, wild pure dingoes remain the dominant predator over most of
Australia, but the speed and extent to which hybridization has occurred in
the approximately 220 years since the first introduction of domestic dogs
indicate that the process may soon threaten the persistence of pure
dingoes.