Pure dingoes may not be rare
But pure dingoes may not be as rare as we think, according to authors of a new genetic study.
“While some dingoes have a dash of domestic dog, as a population they are retaining their genetic identity,” researcher Kylie Cairns of the University of New South Wales said.
But she found there was less genetic purity of dingoes in states where there is more culling of the animals as “wild dogs”.
“If we want to keep dingoes in the wild, we need to reduce culling and we need to think better about how we do it,” Dr Cairns said.
The new research, published in the CSIRO journal Australian Mammalogy, has renewed longstanding debates about the identity of the dingo and how to manage it.
Researchers announced in 2015 that genetic tests had shown “extensive hybridisation” between dingoes and domestic dogs was amounting to “death by sex in an Australian icon”.
Dr Cairns and colleagues challenge these conclusions in their analysis of DNA samples from over 5,000 wild canids.
Australia-wide, 64 per cent were pure dingo, she said.
“Over the past 200 years theres definitely been a process of hybridisation … but the animals that are in the wild are still mostly dingo,” said Dr Cairns, who is supported by a grant from the Australian Dingo Foundation.
“Even in New South Wales theyre holding their own, theyre retaining their genetic identity.”
Her figures showed 24 per cent of canids she surveyed in NSW were pure dingo.
The researchers also suggest “wild dog” culling programs perpetuate a “myth” about how many feral dogs are across the continent.
“There are not that many feral dogs living in the wild, contrary to popular belief,” said Dr Cairns, who reported only 31 feral dogs in her sample.
In fact, culling wild canids could threaten the purity of the dingo gene pool by making it more likely female dingoes will breed with dogs, Dr Cairns said.
She points to her data showing areas of Australia where dingoes are not as widely culled have a higher percentage of pure dingoes. These include Western Australia (97 per cent), South Australia (91 per cent) and the Northern Territory (98 per cent).
Dingoes are a native predator that play an important role in the ecology and should not be killed in national parks, Dr Cairns said.
Culling should not be carried out in the dingo breeding season, and needs to be more targeted to areas where there are stock losses, she added.
But Peter Fleming, a research leader at the NSW Department of Primary Industry, disagrees with the conclusions made by Dr Cairns and her colleagues.
He said the data in the new paper in fact showed a lot of similarities to earlier research he co-authored, which found hybridisation was extensive.
But Dr Cairns and colleagues had used different definitions of key terms, Dr Fleming added.
“It’s a bit of a straw man argument. First of all you redefine what feral is, you redefine what a pure dingo is, and then all the arguments fall into place afterwards.
“It would appear the authors wish to create their own dingo myth to replace the wild dog myth.”
Dr Fleming said dingoes were in greater numbers now than before European settlement, and that culling was necessary to prevent negative impacts on livestock, wildlife and human wellbeing.
Culling is already targeted and not endangering dingoes, he added.
“There is no data to support the idea that culling is a threat to dingo purity,” Dr Fleming said.
“Contrary to Cairns et al’s concern, reducing free-ranging dog populations in the targeted areas is more likely to prevent further introgression [spread] of modern dog genes.”
There is a broad misinterpretation that the dingo was once a “domestic dog” (Canis familiaris) before he went wild in Australia, and really has developed from the common pye-dogs of Asia. That is totally incorrect. The dingo has always been a wild canid, which developed as the wolf of Australia. Primitive peoples may have utilised puppies for whatever purpose (i.e. watch animals, food source, camp cleaners), but they did this by taking young animals from the wild. Unlike the African Wild Dog, or the Asian Dhole, both of which are older evolutionary prototypes of canidae; the dingo does not need to live in a pack and be taught to hunt to survive. The dingo has his prey drive inbuilt as instinctive behaviour. He is a natural, solitary predator. Pure dingoes, like wolves, are still locked genetically into annual breeding cycles.
He also will fit in with social pack hierarchy, as does the wolf, but this is a learned behaviour. Whilst the pye-dogs may have a shared ancestor thousands of years ago, today they bear no family relationship with the pure Australian dingo. They are modern offshoots of mongrel crosses. If one wishes to hold a belief that a dingo is a domestic dog, then the breed is by far the oldest and purest breed in the world, but it is a naturally evolved one and not man-made. Pure dingoes can never become “domesticated” while they remain pure. They are genetically locked into their primitiveness. Similar to what has occurred globally with wolves, coyotes and other wild canid species, which are all able to interbreed, only by crossing with domesticated breeds can the integrity of this genetic blueprint become impaired. But scientific research regarding this matter is lacking and still needs to be conducted, to understand the full extent of hybridisation.