Indian wolves (Canis lupus pallipes) could represent the most ancient surviving lineage of wolves, according to an analysis of the animal’s newly-sequenced genome.
The Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes). Image credit: Dhaval Vargiya / CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Indian wolf is a subspecies of gray wolf first described by the British ornithologist William Henry Sykes in 1831.
It has a wide distribution range that extends from India in the east to Turkey in the west, with populations reported from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Israel.
In India, it inhabits scrublands in three biogeographic zones that include the hot desert, the semi-arid zone and the Deccan plateau.
In the 2000s, Indian wolves were thought to number around 2,000-3,000 individuals in India, with an unknown number of individuals in a declining population in Pakistan.
However, the current taxonomy does not distinguish Indian from other Asian wolves.
“Wolves are one of the last remaining large carnivores in Pakistan, and many of India’s large carnivores are endangered,” said Lauren Hennelly, a doctoral student in the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit in the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis.
“I hope that knowing they are so unique and found only there will inspire local people and scientists to learn more about conserving these wolves and grassland habitats.”
In the new research, Hennelly and colleagues sequenced four Indian wolves, two Tibetan wolves (Canis lupus chanco), and an Indian golden jackal (Canis aureus).
They used the new data along with 30 previously published canid genome sequences to investigate their genomic distinctiveness.
They found that Tibetan and Indian wolves are distinct from each other and from other wolf populations.
“Both Tibetan and Indian wolves stem from an ancient lineage that predates the rise of Holarctic wolves, found in North America and Eurasia,” said Dr. Ben Sacks, director of the Mammalian and Ecology Conservation Unit in the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis.
“This study indicates Indian wolves could represent the most ancient surviving lineage.”
The authors recommend that Indian and Tibetan wolf populations be recognized as evolutionarily significant units, an interim designation that would help prioritize their conservation while their taxonomic classification is reevaluated.
“This paper may be a game-changer for the species to persist in these landscapes,” said Dr. Bilal Habib, a conservation biologist at the Wildlife Institute of India.
“People may realize that the species with whom we have been sharing the landscape is the most distantly divergent wolf alive today.”
The results appear in the journal Molecular Ecology.
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Lauren M. Hennelly et al. Ancient divergence of Indian and Tibetan wolves revealed by recombination-aware phylogenomics. Molecular Ecology, published online August 16, 2021; doi: 10.1111/mec.16127
