Why jackals thrive where humans dominate

APRIL 30, 2019

by Alvin Powell, Harvard University

As humans put nature under the plow, asphalt, and concrete, some creatures thrive through an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach, embracing our disruption of the natural order, and rushing to fill the void created by hunting and habitat change.

Nathan Ranc, a doctoral student studying jointly in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) and the Fondazione Edmund Mach in Italy, has been working with European biologists to document the surprising spread of the golden jackal through Eastern Europe.

Originally a creature of the warmer, drier environments of Turkey, the Middle East, and India, the jackal has spread north as far as the Baltic Sea nation of Estonia, walking for the first time in human memory—and perhaps ever—under northern forests' pines.

Ranc, working in the labs of OEB Professor Paul Moorcroft and Francesca Cagnacci, the 2015–2016 Hrdy Fellow at OEB and now at the Fondazione Edmund Mach, has helped track the jackals' European spread and is analyzing data to better understand what environments Canis aureus prefers and how its interactions with native creatures—particularly the recovering wolf—affect its spread.

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