Talk:Canis rufus rufus

This is old taxonomy. According to Mammals Species of the World and books like Canids, as well as the U Mich animal diversity web, and serveral more prominent judges of such matters, the Red wolf is already a subspecies, a subspecies of Canis Lupus. So if the red wolf is now Canis lupus rufus, than what would this referent become? There are no taxons lower than subspecies, but biology often refers to such things as "Varieties". In the case of Canis lupus familiaris, there called "breeds". This would be written by convention as Canis lupus rufus Var. "rufus". That's the correct way to format the font, I believe. What should the article do, explain the situation? What's the best citation for it? Chrisrus (talk) 03:54, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

The Texas red wolf is NOT an official subspecies of any unique wolf species but rather a hybrid species much like all the other red wolves in captivity who are mixes between various (some that are extinct) subspecies of grey wolves and coyotes. Although the exact subspecies of grey wolves which later on hybridized and gave birth to the Coywolves before the pure ones died out and formerly labelled as these Texas Red wolves are currently unknown, some have suggested that they are hybrids between the now extinct Texas grey wolves (Canis lupus monstrabilis), a subspecies that was said to be closely related to the Mexican grey wolves who are also known to have hybridized with coyotes, and the southern coyotes (Canis latrans texensis) of the Texas state. Although this theory has yet to be confirmed, it is known however that both the Mexican grey wolves and the Texas grey wolves did suffer from persecutions because they were labelled as pests and that after the wolves were driven to remnants, female coyotes of the south managed to hybridized with some of the male wolves of these southern subspecies. While exactly what had happened to the last of the Texas grey wolves is unknown, it is known that female Coywolves from hybridizations between the southern coyotes and Mexican grey wolves had later on backcrossed with other male Mexican grey wolves including some that were reintroduced into the wild from captive recovery programs, while the male Coywolves may have migrated into the plains where they backcrossed with the pure coyotes in Texas. The Texas red wolves however was definitely not a Canis rufus. In fact, some researches have actually suggested that the so-called "distinct" regions of the red wolf haplotypes as well as those other distinct regions found in the Eastern wolves may actually be derived from the original eastern and southeastern grey wolf subspecies who hybridized with the coyotes, some that may have been closely related to the Mexican grey wolves who are also considered a subspecies of the grey wolf that is more genetically distinct from the northern subspecies. But at the same time, since every subspecies of the Canis lupus has certain genetic regions that makes them distinct from all of the other subspecies, it makes it even more difficult to nail down a conclusive "this animal is a distinct wolf species" especially when there is known coyote introgression in its genes just as it has been difficult for researchers to make conclusive statements when studying the northeastern coyotes who have known grey wolf introgressions from both the Eastern grey wolves and the Atlantic Canadian grey wolves from the Newfoundland & Labrador province.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003333 Nosferatuslayer (talk) 18:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

What should we therefore do? Chrisrus (talk) 19:45, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the best approach would be the merge this page with the Texas Grey wolf page, perhaps as a small subject within that page. There is really no need to have another stub page hanging around and causing confusions. Nosferatuslayer (talk) 21:01, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

On second thought, better off delete this page. Nosferatuslayer (talk) 21:06, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Ok. Do you know how to start the deletion process? Chrisrus (talk) 21:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)