Commentary on the nature of Canis lupaster

@jeremygilmore @tonyrebelo @paradoxornithidae @matthewinabinett @jakob @maxallen @hutan123

Please see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316243638_Rediscovering_a_forgotten_canid_species and https://bmczool.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40850-017-0015-0 and https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1186/s40850-017-0015-0 and https://www.academia.edu/32531336/Rediscovering_a_forgotten_canid_species.

I have no problem with switching names from Canis anthus to Canis lupaster, if this abides by taxonomic rules. And, of course, I can accept that this taxon is quite separate from Canis aureus.
 
However, the problem with Viranta et al. (2017) comes in assuming that, because the African taxon is not a ‘golden jackal’, it is neither ‘golden’ nor a ‘jackal’, as it were. Here, the logic followed by these authors is unclear to me.

Why should we call C. lupaster a ‘wolf’? Why do we not just call it the ‘North African jackal’?
 
I may have missed something. However, I did not see any argument in Viranta et al. (2017) to the effect that the morphology of C. lupaster (= ex-C. anthus) is any more wolf-like than the morphology of e.g. Canis latrans, which nobody would call a ‘wolf’ in its pure form.
 
So, for me the sticking point is this idea that C. lupaster is somehow a wolf, rather than a jackal.
 
Since jackals are widespread, we would expect some form of jackal in North Africa, not so?

And the best-known population of C. lupaster (= ex-C. anthus) is the well-documented one in the Serengeti ecosystem, where it looks and behaves like a coyote, and also conforms in every way (including body size of about 10 kg) with the concept of a typical jackal.

Therefore, I fail to see what exactly about C. lupaster is so obviously wolf-like that Viranta et al. (2017) neither call it a jackal nor explain why it is not a jackal.

The real question is not whether it is synonymous with C. aureus; anyone familiar with canids already knew it is not. The real question is how it differs from jackals enough to justify calling it a wolf.
 
Perhaps the answer is ‘some populations show a body form too large and leggy to conform to the idea of ‘jackal’. If so, then I would like to know where these occur, and whether they have been tested for hybridisation with

• some species of true wolf, and
• Canis familiaris.

And, even if there has been no such hybridisation, why is it not within the phenotypic plasticity of C. lupaster to become somewhat more wolf-like, along the same lines as seen in e.g. Caracal caracal in southern Africa, which seems to have become larger where Panthera pardus has been exterminated?
 
There is a further objection which seems not to have occurred to Viranta et al. (2017), as follows.
 
It is thought that Canis familiaris is derived from a ‘true wolf’ to the exclusion of any participation by Canis aureus or any species of jackal. I question this, but let us accept it for the sake of argument. 

It is also known that there is little, if any, evidence of C. familiaris hybridising with any species of jackal (or even with C. latrans).
 
If this is true, then we have the following situation in North Africa.

We are being asked to believe that an African form of true wolf, namely C. lupaster, has been coexisting for at least ten thousand years with C. familiaris in feral form, without hybridising to the extent that the genetic purity of C. lupaster is lost.
 
How likely is that, given that the domestic dog is sometimes (erroneously in my opinion) called C. lupus familiaris?
 
In other words, if C. lupaster has indeed remained genetically pure all these millennia, despite extreme opportunities for hybridisation with feral C. familiaris, is this not in itself evidence that C. lupaster is not a wolf, but a jackal?
 
So what all of this comes down to is the following question:

Given the widespread nature of jackals (and the coyote), with their near-omnivory, their commensalism with humans, and their modest body size and thus limited demands for food, there must surely have been a niche for some sort of jackal in North Africa, just as there has been in the rest of Africa, in parts of Eurasia, and in western North America.

So, if C. lupaster is not a jackal, where is the real North African jackal?

To flesh out further the problems of logic and perspective:

One can, of course, call C. lupaster anything one likes, because after all this is just a common name.

Even if one called C. lupaster the ‘Saharan culpeo’ that would break no rules. This is what scientific names are for: to reveal what any common name really means scientifically.

A compromise might perhaps be to call C. lupaster the ‘wolf-like jackal’.

But the trouble with calling this a wolf is that it simultaneously wipes jackals from a vast section of the globe, about equivalent to the whole USA, by an undebated, subjective, and probably subconscious decision..

I can understand the preference for calling this a wolf. After all, who would want to be known for discovering a new species of jackal, if they can be known for discovering a new species of wolf?

The trouble is that this is neither scientifically valid, nor necessarily constructive, if the full balance of factors is considered.

There is yet another obvious problem in all of this, which Viranta et al. (2017) seem, again, to have overlooked.

This is that - as everyone knows - the niche of ‘true wolves’ is taken in Africa, as far north as the Sahara and formerly perhaps even north of the Sahara, by Lycaon.

Nobody would expect both a ‘true wolf’ and Lycaon to share the Sahel, because

• the niche of top predator, specialised for flesh rather than scavenging, is so extremely demanding that it could not support two competing species; and
• sympatric species of Carnivora are notorious for hating and killing each other, even if they have no intention of eating each other.

There is nowhere on Earth that has two species of wolves, as defined by a certain body mass, dentition, and dependence on fresh kills, as opposed to scavenging and commensalism.

So the problematic implication of calling Canis lupaster a ‘wolf’ is that in the Sahel (and probably far more widely) there were two canids coexisting in the niche of ‘wolf’, namely C. lupaster and Lycaon pictus.

The argument in Viranta et al. (2017) seems to come down to

• emphasis on genetic evidence to the exclusion of other equally valid evidence, and
• trust that the recent genetic studies will not simply be overturned by future genetic studies that show some different viewpoint.

In my experience, genetics is one of the most subjective of branches of Biology. So, I expect that in a few years we will see a series of papers contesting the real genetic affinities of C. lupaster.

Whether the new generations of authors will be able to rise to the occasion of associating their names with the real identity of their animal – surely a jackal rather than a wolf - remains to be seen.

Posted on 10 de setembro de 2022, 09:08 AM by milewski