March 28, 2024
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Two Canada lynx-bobcat hybrids confirmed in Maine

The two wildcats of the Maine woods – Canada lynx and bobcat – are interbreeding, state wildlife biologists announced Wednesday.

Hair and tissue samples from two suspected hybrid cats were tested by a U.S. Forest Service lab this summer and DNA analysis indicated that both animals were the result of a bobcat father and lynx mother, said state wildlife biologist Jennifer Vashon.

This is only the second documented instance of the cats’ hybridizing anywhere in North America. The first lynx-bobcat cross was proven through DNA testing on three Minnesota cats, discovered earlier this spring. Testing on the Minnesota and Maine hybrids was done at the Wildlife Ecology Research Unit of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont.

The Maine hybrids, one male and one female, looked alike, but couldn’t easily be identified as either species of cat. They had the long ear tufts and black-tipped tails of lynx, but larger bodies and smaller feet of bobcats, Vashon said.

“They were funny looking bobcats,” said state wildlife biologist Wally Jakubas.

The two wildcats are of similar size and habits, and they share the same genus, but are classified as different species – the same relationship that a wolf has to a coyote or to a domestic dog – so biologists had long suspected that hybridization was possible, Jakubas said.

The cats’ relationship to humans is very different, however.

Lynx are very rare, and haven’t been hunted in Maine since 1968. They were declared federally threatened three years ago, and thus, have the full protection of the Endangered Species Act. Killing or “harassing” a lynx can result in costly fines or even jail time.

Hybrid animals don’t receive such federal protection, however.

Bobcats are plentiful in Maine, and can be hunted and trapped in the early winter. More than 260 bobcats were harvested last year, according to Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife records.

In fact, the first of Maine’s hybrid cats was reported in 1998 by a trapper seeking bobcats, and the second, which also had been trapped, was spotted last year by a graduate student from the University of Maine while she was out hunting.

The prevalence of hybridization is unknown, but 29 samples of lynx hair and tissue taken in far northern Maine showed no evidence of bobcat genes, so scientists believe that the two cats are still genetically distinct.

Both of Maine’s hybrid cats were seen in the Moosehead region, near where the home ranges of lynx and bobcat overlap. At the boundary between ranges, where both cats are scarce, hybridization should not be surprising, Jakubas said.

Bobcats are most prevalent south of Millinocket, where the snow is less deep. They live closer to developed areas and towns and are a more aggressive predator with a varied diet of small rabbits, birds and rodents.

Lynx, which have taller back legs and tufted ears, have huge snowshoelike hairy feet that help them live in the far northern parts of the state, particularly in the industrial forests west of the town of Allagash, though they do venture into northern Penobscot and Piscataquis counties. They eat snowshoe hare almost exclusively.

Some hybrid animals, such as Maine’s splake – a fish created by crossing brook trout and lake trout – are sterile. But the lynx-bobcat cross can reportedly bear young. When the female hybrid was caught last winter, she had a litter of three kittens, Vashon said.

Maine’s wild dogs have interbred for generations, leading to great confusion over the provenance of the large Eastern coyote and its relationship to federally protected gray wolves. And spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest are complicating their status by hybridizing with a common owl species.

Whether hybrid wildcats could end up in such genetic limbo is unknown.

“If the hybrids [of a rare species and common one] are reproducing, you have to question, all of a sudden: What are we protecting?” said Michael Schwartz, a wildlife ecologist from Montana who helped conduct the DNA tests.

Maine’s bobcat populations have been on the rise for the past decade, while lynx appear to be at the peak population in their natural cycle. The hybrids could be a fluke, the result of high numbers prompting cats to colonize new territory. It’s also possible that lynx and bobcats have always swapped a few genes, gaining the diversity that strengthens a population in the process.

“This might have been going on for 10,000 years,” Jakubas said.

“We don’t even know if this is something that’s natural or something caused by changes we’re making on the landscape,” Schwartz added.

Schwartz is hoping to acquire research money to test the DNA of a large sample of lynx from across the country in hopes of determining how frequently the cats hybridize, as well as to gain a better understanding of the hybrid animals’ ecology.


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