sandgrubber Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 (edited) Another observation from Retrieverman. . .. and another weakness in ethology studies linking dog behaviour to wolf behaviour. for full article see http://retrieverman....c-dog/#comments The primary ancestors of the domestic dog July 11, 2011 by retrieverman Canis lupus arabs– the Arabian wolf: And Canis lupus pallipes– the Iranian wolf: According to recent genome-wide analysis, most domestic dogs share many more genetic markers with Middle Eastern wolves than with any other subspecies. Arabian wolves weigh 25-55 pounds. Arabian wolves have the same "small dog" gene that causes very small size in domestic dogs. They also have the fused middle toes on the front feet, a trait they share with basenjis. Iranian wolves go 55-70 pounds, rough the same size as a typical golden retriever. Neither of these wolves are the big "moose-killer" wolves from the northern parts of Eurasia and North America that every knows so well, that everyone sees in zoos, and that everyone thinks are the primary ancestors of the domestic dogs. Research that in anyway compares dogs to these wolves is methodological murky, for these wolves are actually quite specialized in their behavior. These smaller Middle Eastern wolf subspecies are much more generalist in their behavior and prey choices. It might be a better study to compare "primitive" domestic dogs, like dingoes and basenjis, with these wolves. . .. posting the newspaper version of this in the News section . . . when I posted this I hadn't noticed that it was actually a News item and the Retrieverman Blog is commenting on that news. Edited July 17, 2011 by sandgrubber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeckoTree Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 (edited) Dingoe(Australian) has origins from domesticated asian dogs which were probably from a now extinct asian wolf. A huge genome study was done on it a few years back. Edited July 17, 2011 by -GT- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandgrubber Posted July 17, 2011 Author Share Posted July 17, 2011 Dingoe(Australian) has origins from domesticated asian dogs which were probably from a now extinct asian wolf. A huge genome study was done on it a few years back. According to more recent study, it's more complex. I think they're finding that, as you might expect, the original semi-domesticated or domesticated dogs crossed out to other wolf populations along the migration route. They didn't worry much about pedigrees in prehistory, nor was it easy to confine a bitch on season . . . . so you'd expect that the local boys would inject DNA as dogs migrated from the Middle East through South Asia to Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MalteseLuna Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 That paper has been out since 2010 (Vonholdt et al 2010 from Nature) - I'm actually not sure that the wolf subspecies listed in this post (Canis lupus arabs etc) are the correct subspecies. Just because the article (the scientific one) says middle eastern wolves does not mean that it's the specialized middle eastern wolves subspecies rather than Canis lupus lupus that was further spread across the landscape. I will have to check the paper again (which I can't do from home atm)... Dingoes are among the oldest dog breeds and there is strong evidence that some ancient Asian breeds are derived from Asian wolves not middle eastern wolves. There is a new paper which just came out but its more about wolves and less about dogs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeckoTree Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Heres the PDF on the dna origin of the dingo that I read. http://www.pnas.org/content/101/33/12387.full.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeckoTree Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Some fantastic info on dingoes sorry it's linked to another forum, hope it's ok, its some of the best condensed info I have seen all in one place. http://www.carnivoraforum.com/index.cgi?board=canine&action=print&thread=924 OT I know the topic's not about dingoes, I just got carried away I love them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandgrubber Posted July 18, 2011 Author Share Posted July 18, 2011 That paper has been out since 2010 (Vonholdt et al 2010 from Nature) - I'm actually not sure that the wolf subspecies listed in this post (Canis lupus arabs etc) are the correct subspecies. Just because the article (the scientific one) says middle eastern wolves does not mean that it's the specialized middle eastern wolves subspecies rather than Canis lupus lupus that was further spread across the landscape. I will have to check the paper again (which I can't do from home atm)... Dingoes are among the oldest dog breeds and there is strong evidence that some ancient Asian breeds are derived from Asian wolves not middle eastern wolves. There is a new paper which just came out but its more about wolves and less about dogs. Oops, You're right on two counts. The paper is a year old . . . I didn't notice the date. The more recent paper is Bridgett M. vonHoldt, John P. Pollinger1, Dent A. Earl2,et al, 2011, A genome-wide perspective on the evolutionary history of enigmatic wolf-like canids, Genome Research in May 2011. I can't access Genomic Research, but Discover Magazine published a lay version. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/05/a-map-of-charismatic-canid-genomic-variation/ This doesn't really address the geography of dog origins . . . more focus on wolf x coyote mixing in North America. It does show PCA results separating the dog cluster and various wolf population clusters. This suggests dogs are closest to Southern Europe or the Middle East. Looks like the first two dimensions in the PCA didn't explain a high percent of the variance, which if I remember my stats raises doubts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MalteseLuna Posted July 19, 2011 Share Posted July 19, 2011 (edited) I do think that Canis lupus arabs or Canis lupus pallipes are subspecies of the grey wolf but I don't think that the paper was suggesting that dogs evolved from them - I sometimes wish that the papers would use the scientific names of the species/subspecies etc to make it clearer. Edited July 19, 2011 by MalteseLuna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weasels Posted July 19, 2011 Share Posted July 19, 2011 I do think that Canis lupus arabs or Canis lupus pallipes are subspecies of the grey wolf but I don't think that the paper was suggesting that dogs evolved from them - I sometimes wish that the papers would use the scientific names of the species/subspecies etc to make it clearer. Although to be fair, having recently investigated how many subspecies of wolf there are on wikipedia, I would avoid the whole damn thing too. The vonHoldt paper from memory just identified C. lupus without any subspecific designations. Plus there are a lot of sources on the web which say dingoes are decended/semidomesticated from C. l. pallipes based on speculation from some old (pre-DNA) references (i.e., they look alike),which would add to the confusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandgrubber Posted July 19, 2011 Author Share Posted July 19, 2011 I do think that Canis lupus arabs or Canis lupus pallipes are subspecies of the grey wolf but I don't think that the paper was suggesting that dogs evolved from them - I sometimes wish that the papers would use the scientific names of the species/subspecies etc to make it clearer. I think many geneticists feel that subspecies are not valid taxa unless backed by genetic evidence. You'll find people from Wayne's group identify by haplotype and geographic origin, but rarely use Latin subspecies names. I suspect they'd say their way is more scientific than carrying the classification past Canis lupus. Most of their Middle Eastern wolf DNA came from Isreal, and their results seem to show the Isreali wolf population to be heterogeneous . . . . if I'm reading correctly. I think it was Retrieverman who brought in the subspecies names. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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