Himalayan wolf

Canis chanco was the scientific name proposed by John Edward Gray in 1863, who described a skin of a wolf that was shot in Chinese Tartary. • Lupus filchneri by Paul Matschie in 1907 from a wolf skin from Xining in China's Qinghai province. In 1938, Glover Morrill Allen classified these specimens as synonyms for the subspecies C. l. chanco. In 1941, Reginald Pocock corroborated this assessment after reviewing wolf skins and skulls in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London. Canis himalayensis was proposed by Aggarwal et al. in 2007 for wolf specimens from the Indian Himalayas that differed in mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) from specimens collected from other parts of India. In April 2009, it was proposed as a distinct wolf species through the nomenclature specialist on the CITES animals committee based on a single study that relied on only a limited number of museum and zoo samples that may not have been representative of the wild population. The committee recommended against this proposal, but suggested that the name be entered into the CITES species database as a synonym for Canis lupus. The committee stated that the classification was for conservation purposes only, and did not "reflect the latest state of taxonomic knowledge", and called for further fieldwork. As per a 2018 report, this genetic lineage showed a 3.9% divergence in the mDNA cytochrome b gene when compared with the Holarctic grey wolf (Canis lupus), which may justify it being classified as a distinct species. In 2019, a workshop hosted by the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group noted that the Himalayan wolf's distribution included the Himalayan range and the Tibetan Plateau. The group determined that the earliest available Latin name is Canis chanco (Gray, 1863), but the geographic location of the holotype is unclear. The group recommends that this wolf lineage be known as the "Himalayan wolf" and classified as Canis lupus chanco until a genetic analysis of the holotypes is available. In 2020, recent research on the Himalayan wolf genome indicates that it warrants species-level recognition under the Unified Species Concept, the Differential Fitness Species Concept, and the Biological Species Concept. It was identified as an evolutionary significant unit that warranted assignment onto the IUCN Red List for its protection. ==Characteristics==

The Himalayan wolf has a thick, woolly fur that is dull earthy-brown on the back and tail, and yellowish-white on the face, underside, and limbs. ==Phylogeography==

The mitochondrial DNA of 27 wolves from the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau was compared in 2004. Results indicate that five related haplotypes formed a clade that is basal to all other wolves. This clade included one sample from Ladakh, nine from the Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh, four from Nepal, and two from Tibet. The Himalayan wolf clade diverged from other canids 800,000 years ago. Seven wolves from Kashmir did not fall into this clade. Its MT-ND4L gene commences with the base pairs GTG, whereas all other canids commence with ATG. Results of whole genome sequencing showed that it is the most genetically divergent wolf. }} DNA sequences can be mapped to reveal a phylogenetic tree that represents evolutionary relationships, with each branch point representing the divergence of two lineages from a common ancestor. On this tree, the term "basal" is used to describe a lineage that forms a branch diverging nearest to the common ancestor. Domestic dogs exhibit diverse coat colours and patterns. In many mammals, different colour patterns are the result of the regulation of the Agouti gene, which can cause hair follicles to switch from making black or brown pigments to yellow or nearly white pigments. The most common coat pattern found in modern wolves is agouti, in which the upperside of the body has banded hairs and the underside exhibits lighter shading. The colour yellow is dominant to the colour black and is found in dogs across much of the world and the dingo in Australia. An analysis of the Himalayan wolf mitochondrial genome indicates that the Himalayan wolf diverged between 740,000 and 691,000 years ago from the lineage that would become the Holarctic gray wolf. Between 2011 and 2015, two mDNA studies found that the Himalayan wolf and Indian gray wolf were genetically closer to the African golden wolf than they were to the Holarctic gray wolf. From 2017, two studies based on mDNA, and X-chromosome and Y-chromosome markers taken from the cell nucleus, indicate that the Himalayan wolf is genetically basal to the Holarctic gray wolf. Its degree of divergence from the Holarctic gray wolf is similar to the degree of divergence of the African wolf from the Holarctic wolf. The Himalayan wolf shares a maternal lineage with the African wolf. It possesses a unique paternal lineage that falls between the gray wolf and the African wolf. The results of these two studies imply that the Himalayan wolf distribution range extends from the Himalayan range north across the Tibetan Plateau up to the Qinghai Lake region in China's Qinghai Province. In 2018, whole genome sequencing was used to compare members of the genus Canis. The African golden wolf was found to be the descendant of a genetically admixed canid of 72% gray wolf and 28% Ethiopian wolf ancestry. The Ethiopian wolf does not share the single-nucleotide polymorphisms that confer hypoxia adaptation with the Himalayan wolf. The adaptation of the Ethiopian wolf to living in high elevations may occur at other single-nucleotide polymorphism locations. This indicates that the Ethiopian wolf's adaptation has not been inherited by descent from a common ancestor shared with the Himalayan wolf. ==Distribution and habitat==

In China, the Himalayan wolf lives on the Tibetan Plateau in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, and western Sichuan. ==Behaviour and ecology==

The howls of the Himalayan wolf have lower frequencies, unmodulated frequencies, and are shorter in duration compared to Holarctic wolf howls. The Himalayan and North African wolves have the most acoustically distinct howls and differ significantly from each other and the Holarctic wolves. Other recorded prey species are Bactrian deer, Yarkand deer, Tibetan red deer, Siberian roe deer, Siberian ibex, Tibetan wild ass, Przewalski's horse, wild yak, markhor, argali and urial. Historical sources indicate that wolves occasionally killed children in Ladakh and Lahaul. Within the proposed Gya-Miru Wildlife Sanctuary in Ladakh, the intensity of livestock depredation assessed in three villages found that Himalayan wolves were the most prevalent predators, accounting for 60% of the total livestock losses, followed by the snow leopard and Eurasian lynx. The most frequent prey were domestic goats (32%), followed by sheep (30%), yaks (15%), and horses (13%). The wolves killed horses significantly more, and goats less, than would be expected from their relative abundance. ==Conservation==

in Darjeeling The wolf in Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan is listed on CITES Appendix I. In India, the wolf is protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which prohibits hunting; a zoo needs a permission from the government to acquire a wolf. It is listed as endangered in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, where a large portion of the wolf population lives outside the protected area network. In China, the wolf is listed as vulnerable in the ''Red List of China's Vertebrates'', and hunting it is banned. In captivity In 2007, 18 Himalayan wolves were kept for breeding in two Indian zoos. They were captured in the wild and were kept at the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in West Bengal, and in the Kufri Zoo in Himachal Pradesh. ==Notes==