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Studying the ecology and behavior of pack animals often requires that most, or all, of the pack members are sampled. A unique opportunity to sample all gray wolf (Canis lupus) pack members arises during the summer months when reproductive packs localize in rendezvous sites. We collected 155-296 scat and hair samples from each of 5 wolf rendezvous sites in central Idaho to evaluate intrapack relationships and determine the efficacy of noninvasive genetic sampling (NGS) for estimating pack size and family relationships. We detected 65 wolves (5-20 wolves per pack) with NGS, and the pack counts from NGS were the same or higher for adults and the same or slightly lower for pups compared with the counts from observation and telemetry. The wolves in each pack were closely related to one another, and all packs included at least 2 years of offspring from the current breeding pair. Three of the packs had additional breeding adults present. In 1 pack pups were produced by a parent-offspring pair and a pair of their inbred full siblings, indicating multiple cases of inbreeding. This targeted NGS approach shows great promise for studying pack size and wolf social structure without the use of radiotelemetry or direct observations.
Key words: Canis lupus, fecal genotyping, inbreeding, kinship, multiple litters, noninvasive genetic sampling, pack structure, pedigree, wolves
© 2011 American Society of Mammalogists
DOI: 10.1644/10-MAMM-A-200.1
Studying the ecology and behavior of animals with a pack social structure requires detailed knowledge of the number of individuals in a pack and the relatedness of those individuals. For example, gray wolf (Canis lupus) pack size is correlated with hunting efficiency, prey type, and territory size (Mech and Boitani 2003). In addition, the family relationships in a pack dictate breeding status and competition for food (Packard 2003). Wild pedigrees are fundamental tools for examining biological questions (Liberg et al. 2005; Pemberton 2008; Visser 2008), but a key challenge when inferring genealogical relationships among pack animals is collecting data from all, or nearly all, animals in the pack. Pedigree reconstruction from wild species typically requires observational and genetic data (e.g., red wolves [Canis rufus-Adams 2006], brown bears [Ursus arctos-DeBarba et al. 2010], and African wild dogs [Lycaon pictus-Girman et al. 1997]), but some studies have reconstructed genealogies using...