Wolf (Canis lupus)

[Sully]

"During the Quaternary Megafaunal Extinction (~11.7 ka), North America saw widespread, landscape-scale ecological changes that ultimately contributed to the loss of many species, including horses (Guthrie, 2006) and mammoths (Fisher, 1996; Koch and Barnosky, 2006). We show that extinction of much of the mammal megafauna during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition induced a dietary change among wolves. Recent Yukon wolves rely primarily on the extant large ungulates, caribou and moose (Gauthier and Theberge, 1986; Hayes et al., 2016; Merkle et al., 2017), while Pleistocene wolves primarily consumed horses. Wolves, however, did not change their carcass utilization behaviours, consuming primarily flesh and little bone. Though wolves exhibit some degree of ecological flexibility, they have remained large ungulate specialists. Future studies should include modern (early 2000s to present) wolf specimens from the Yukon to observe whether wolf diets have continued to change throughout time. It will be crucial to conserve populations of caribou and moose as well as the ecosystems with which they are associated, particularly as climate continues to alter the Canadian Arctic at rates far exceeding the global average (Glig et al., 2012; Rowland et al., 2016)."

Dietary reconstruction and evidence of prey shifting in Pleistocene and recent gray wolves (Canis lupus) from Yukon Territory Reply