Indian and western Asian wolf populations are currently considered as one population. “People may realize that the species with whom we have been sharing the landscape is the most distantly divergent wolf alive today.”
“This paper may be a game-changer for the species to persist in these landscapes,” said co-author Bilal Habib, a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Institute of India. The study recommends 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. They found that Tibetan and Indian wolves are distinct from each other and from other wolf populations. The authors sequenced genomes of four Indian and two Tibetan wolves and included 31 additional canid genomes to resolve their evolutionary and phylogenomic history. (Mihir Godbole/The Grasslands Trust) ‘A game-changer’ “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.”Īn Indian wolf howls in a grassland. “Wolves are one of the last remaining large carnivores in Pakistan, and many of India’s large carnivores are endangered,” said lead author Lauren Hennelly, a doctoral student with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Mammalian Ecology Conservation Unit. The Indian wolf is restricted to lowland India and Pakistan, where its grassland habitat is threatened primarily by human encroachment and land conversion. The study indicates that Indian wolves could represent the most ancient surviving lineage of wolves. The findings, published in the journal Molecular Ecology, reveal the Indian wolf to be one of the world’s most endangered and evolutionarily distinct gray wolf populations. The Indian wolf could be far more endangered than previously recognized, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and the scientists who sequenced the Indian wolf’s genome for the first time.
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