Clarification regarding samples of Egyptian and Israeli jackals referred to in the Rueness et al. 2011 PLoS ONE article The Cryptic African Wolf: Canis aureus lupaster Is Not a Golden Jackal and Is Not Endemic to Egypt'. In our article we compare our mitochondrial DNA Cytochrome b sequences to those of Nassef (2003; The Ecology and Evolution of the golden jackal (Canis aureus) Investigating a cryptid species. Master thesis. The university of Leeds), as this is a master dissertation that is not publicly available we would like to add some additional information.

The seven individuals of Egyptian jackal (Canis aures lupaster) from which Nassef presents DNA sequences were all caught in the wild in mainland Egypt and sampled for blood. All of these individuals had the same haplotype. The 365bp long sequence presented differs from that of the animals sampled in Ethiopia by two point mutations. The samples of Israeli golden jackals included in Nassef's dissertation were skin tissue. All of the samples shared the same haplotype. The 365bp DNA sequence is identical to that of jackals sampled in Serbia included in our article and differed from sequences of Indian golden jackals by four point mutations. For comparison, the number of segregating sites separating the Ethiopian and the Israeli samples was 18.