Long-distance dispersal of a wolf, Canis lupus, in northwestern Europe

Several mammal species have recolonized their historical ranges across Europe during the last decades. In November 2012, a wolf-looking canid was found dead in Thy National Park (56 degrees 56' N, 8 degrees 25' E) in Jutland, Denmark. DNA from this individual and nine German wolves were genotyped using a genome-wide panel of 22,163 canine single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers and compared to existing profiles based on the same marker panel obtained from northeastern Polish (n = 13) wolves, domestic dogs (n = 13) and known wolf-dog hybrids (n = 4). The Thy canid was confirmed to be a wolf from the German-western Polish population, approximately 800 km to the southeast. Access to the German reference database on DNA profiles based on 13 autosomal microsatellites of German wolves made it possible to pinpoint the exact pack origin of the Thy wolf in Saxony, Germany. This was the first documented observation of a wolf in Denmark in 200 years and another example of long-distance dispersal of a carnivore.