Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves
Recent advances in genomics and palaeontology have begun to unravel the complex evolutionary history of the gray wolf, Canis lupus. Still, much of their phenotypic variation across time and space remains to be documented. We examined the limb morphology of the fossil and modern North American gray w...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5803591 2023-05-15T15:49:44+02:00 Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves Tomiya, Susumu Meachen, Julie A. 2018-01 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5803591/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29343558 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0613 en eng The Royal Society http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5803591/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29343558 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0613 © 2018 The Author(s) http://royalsocietypublishing.org/licence Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. Evolutionary Biology Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0613 2019-01-06T01:18:16Z Recent advances in genomics and palaeontology have begun to unravel the complex evolutionary history of the gray wolf, Canis lupus. Still, much of their phenotypic variation across time and space remains to be documented. We examined the limb morphology of the fossil and modern North American gray wolves from the late Quaternary (<ca 70 ka) to better understand their postcranial diversity through time. We found that the late-Pleistocene gray wolves were characterized by short-leggedness on both sides of the Cordilleran–Laurentide ice sheets, and that this trait survived well into the Holocene despite the collapse of Pleistocene megafauna and disappearance of the ‘Beringian wolf' from Alaska. By contrast, extant populations in the Midwestern USA and northwestern North America are distinguished by their elongate limbs with long distal segments, which appear to have evolved during the Holocene possibly in response to a new level or type of prey depletion. One of the consequences of recent extirpation of the Plains (Canis lupus nubilus) and Mexican wolves (C. l. baileyi) from much of the USA is an unprecedented loss of postcranial diversity through removal of short-legged forms. Conservation of these wolves is thus critical to restoration of the ecophenotypic diversity and evolutionary potential of gray wolves in North America. Text Canis lupus gray wolf Alaska PubMed Central (PMC) Biology Letters 14 1 20170613 |
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Evolutionary Biology |
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Evolutionary Biology Tomiya, Susumu Meachen, Julie A. Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves |
topic_facet |
Evolutionary Biology |
description |
Recent advances in genomics and palaeontology have begun to unravel the complex evolutionary history of the gray wolf, Canis lupus. Still, much of their phenotypic variation across time and space remains to be documented. We examined the limb morphology of the fossil and modern North American gray wolves from the late Quaternary (<ca 70 ka) to better understand their postcranial diversity through time. We found that the late-Pleistocene gray wolves were characterized by short-leggedness on both sides of the Cordilleran–Laurentide ice sheets, and that this trait survived well into the Holocene despite the collapse of Pleistocene megafauna and disappearance of the ‘Beringian wolf' from Alaska. By contrast, extant populations in the Midwestern USA and northwestern North America are distinguished by their elongate limbs with long distal segments, which appear to have evolved during the Holocene possibly in response to a new level or type of prey depletion. One of the consequences of recent extirpation of the Plains (Canis lupus nubilus) and Mexican wolves (C. l. baileyi) from much of the USA is an unprecedented loss of postcranial diversity through removal of short-legged forms. Conservation of these wolves is thus critical to restoration of the ecophenotypic diversity and evolutionary potential of gray wolves in North America. |
format |
Text |
author |
Tomiya, Susumu Meachen, Julie A. |
author_facet |
Tomiya, Susumu Meachen, Julie A. |
author_sort |
Tomiya, Susumu |
title |
Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves |
title_short |
Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves |
title_full |
Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves |
title_fullStr |
Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves |
title_full_unstemmed |
Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves |
title_sort |
postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of north american gray wolves |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5803591/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29343558 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0613 |
genre |
Canis lupus gray wolf Alaska |
genre_facet |
Canis lupus gray wolf Alaska |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5803591/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29343558 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0613 |
op_rights |
© 2018 The Author(s) http://royalsocietypublishing.org/licence Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0613 |
container_title |
Biology Letters |
container_volume |
14 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
20170613 |
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1766384773526192128 |