8 June 2023

One Wolf Species or Two in North America?

According to an article in the 01 June 2023 issue of Journal of American Mammalogy, the split of gray wolf into two North American species was very stringy. How stringy? Pretty darn stringy.

Article is

Morphological relationships among populations support a single taxonomic unit for the North American Gray Wolf

Kamal Khidas

and the short answer is, one species not two.

It did not get into the idea of red wolf being 20% coyote etc.

abstract:

The Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) is viewed as one of the most diverse mammal species. In North America, the diversity of its forms is debated, with views conflicting on subspecies designation. The present study aimed to reinvestigate the skull morphometric variation among North American populations while attempting to unveil underlying causal factors. A large sample of vouchered museum skulls, collected from 12 ecogeographical populations spanning the North American range of the species, was examined and 21 craniodental characters were measured. Skull shape showed within-population variations but provided evidence for a high morphological affinity among populations. Allometric analyses also pointed to similar evolutionary paths among populations. However, significant size-related differentiation was revealed within and among populations. Skull size could be related to three insulin-like growth factor-1 gene (IGF-1) alleles. Ecological conditions that should determine prey type and availability accounted for most of the skull size variation. In contrast, no evidence of geographical isolation of populations was detected. The results support the existence of a single morphological pool of North American gray wolf populations that could be equated with one taxonomic unit. This study raises again the question of the diversity of forms in this species in North America and calls into question the validity of previously recognized species and subspecies based on genetics and morphology.

I will try to attach the article as a pdf. / Charles Hood

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4 Comments

  • 10 June 2023
    Vladimir Dinets

    Looks like absolutely useless waste of time to me. Not just because they left out the most diverse extant subspecies of C. lupus (the Mexican wolf), but also because the entire approach is (1) obsolete in the age of molecular studies and (2) methodologically flawed. What they are trying to demonstrate is that C. lycaon is conspecific with C. lupus – but this is not a question you can answer using skull comparisons between a highly localized taxon and a highly variable one. Not to mention multiple other issues, like the paper having zero novelty and being mostly filled with discussions of older literature, lousy geographical divisions (some overlapping, one skull apparently coming from open ocean), etc.

    • 10 June 2023
      Vladimir Dinets

      It is a widespread dogma in North American zoology that you can publish any BS as long as there’s a lot of fancy statistics and you mention “statistical significance” at least ten times. In reality, statistical significance is used in a completely wrong way in North American science , and statistics are neither a requirement for all types of papers nor something that makes a paper “scientific”. But it looks like at least 2 generations of scientists will have to die off for things to improve.

  • 12 June 2023
    KyleFinn

    To compare the study with ones done on Puma concolor, they also show extensive morphological variation in cranial measurements, which lead to over 40 some odd subspecies in the early days of mammalogy subspecies assignments. Genetic analysis though shows a single species with 3 subspecies. Why should northern wolves (excluding red and Mexican wolves) be multiple species? It seems the more advance genetic analysis even shows them as hybrids between adjacent populations or with coyotes. I feel that molecular biologists are too quick to split into different species, one team’s analysis shows multiple species, but another teams finds a single species with different distinct clades (ie subspecies). My mole-rats are a good example as well, some of the recognized species may be subspecies, while other subspecies may be full species all depending on how you analyze the data and what samples you have. ANd then reptile taxonomy is even more picky!

    • 12 June 2023
      KyleFinn

      I do agree that the study should have combined morphology and genetic analysis instead of just one or the other.

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