Talk:Himalayan wolf

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move per request. As noted below, this follows our normal naming criteria for recognized species. It's good to explore if the distinction that it is not recognized should reach a different result, but I don't see why that would be, and apparently no one else does either.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:43, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Himalayan Wolf → Himalayan wolf – per WP:FNAME species titles should be in sentence case. However, as the Himalayan wolf has not been officially recognised as a species by any authoritative bodies, I thought it best to bring it to a full discussion, in case our naming conventions are different for proposed species. Jenks24 (talk) 08:00, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Support - I think that's fair enough. After all, we do use Gray wolf. :) Miyagawa   (talk)  18:43, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Support too ! -- BhagyaMani (talk) 19:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Support I tried to move it but it refused to go for some reason. I think it's because there is a redirect at Himalayan wolf. I was going to just copy and paste it there by hand but it specifically asked me not to because the History of the article would be screwed up. I think maybe we need an adminstrator or something. Should we try a "help" request? Chrisrus (talk) 19:51, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No need, that's the point of the requested move discussion. After a week an admin will come along and move (or not move) the article depending on what people agree on (i.e. the consensus). Jenks24 (talk) 00:24, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I see. In short, we request:
 * Swap Himalayan wolf <-> Himalayan Wolf (redirect <-> article).
 * Himalayan wolves & Himalayan Wolves -> Himalayan wolf.
 * Chrisrus (talk) 02:46, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's exactly what would happen (admins have the ability to move over redirects, which we normal users can't do). We don't have to wait for an admin to create Himalayan wolves and Himalayan Wolves as redirects, though, so I've just done that now. Jenks24 (talk) 03:16, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Taxonomy
I have updated the Taxonomy section of the Himalayan wolf and the Indian wolf to reflect the research of Sharma and Aggarwal. The research findings were based on a very limited number of specimens which did not convince the CITES Animals Committee that these were separate species, and a call for wider research was made. However, the committee did approve the use of the name be entered into the species database as a synonym of the name under which it was listed. What this means is that in the CITES species database, researchers may enter information under the name Canis himalayensis as long as it was a sub-topic of Canis lupus chanco, and the 2 haplotypes proposed within the Indian wolf to be entered under Canis indica as long as it was a sub-topic of Canis lupus pallipes. This is what I have captured with the synonym entry for each. As far as MSW3 is concerned there is no Canis himalayensis nor Canis indica, and therefore as far as zoologists are concerned these do not exist. Nonetheless, based on the limited samples that were provided by the Aggarwal, as far as evolutionary biologists are concerned there is a genetic difference and sequences are being compared in research reports under the names HW and IW. I trust that this information will help stop some of the disruptive edits that have been made recently. Regards, William Harris  •   talk •   21:51, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Taxonomic confusion continues
This article starts "The Himalayan wolf (Canis lupus chanco, syn. Canis himalayensis)...."

The article on the Tibetan wolf starts "The Tibetan wolf (Canis lupus chanco), also known as the woolly wolf...."

We have a problem: the two articles purport to discuss one and the same species, if the species name is correct in both articles.

Perhaps one of the authors will undertake to revise these articles? Failing this, I will do so - when I get round to it. Nakashchit (talk) 11:43, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Please read the section directly above this one, and the taxonomy section of the article. According to MSW3 these are both classified as C. l. chanco. According to the genticists, the Himalayan wolf is something completely different - it may not even be Canis lupus. They use the term "distinct lineage", not exactly falling in with the rest of the lupine pack. Regards,  William Harris &#124;talk 12:44, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi William, With the greatest of respect for your apparently comprehensive knowledge of the issue, you still cannot have two articles on two different creatures identified solely by the same scientific name, even though you have provided details of the current state of the taxonomic discussion. Equally, of course, I do not suggest that you use the vehicle of a Wikipedia article to put forward a view that differs from MSW3. May I suggest that you simply insert an identification of the one as the population of Canis Lupus Chanco in Ladakh and Spiti, and the other that of the Tivetan Plareau? Nakashchit (talk) 16:33, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I do not have a watch on this article, as it is not of a strategic interest to me. "you still cannot have two articles on two different creatures identified solely by the same scientific name" - I beg to differ; we currently have about 400 dog articles all under the taxonomic classification of Canis lupus familiaris. The lead sentance is the name that CITES allows, and they have a lot more influence on mammalogists than Wozencraft's musings in a 12-year-old and out-of-date document that will not see an edition 4. Also, please be aware that I am the one that got chanco into the first sentence, as it once read only himalayensis. If you wish to enter into an edit war with the himalayensis purists that watch this page, you are moving in that direction. Either way it is not my concern. Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  11:05, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Overhaul
Hello all, I have overhauled this article. (Much of its content was originally provided by me over the years.) Major changes include:
 * indicating that the statistical support for the wolf is not high - 50% - as advised by Sharma
 * the Himalayan wolf does not live in a specific area - among those Tibetan wolves living in the trans-Himalayas are SOME wolves that exhibit genetic sequences referred to as the "Himalayan wolf" clade (Sharma 2004), and some of these sequences have been found as far away as Mongolia (Ersmark 2016)
 * regarding the Tibetan wolf article, it now reflects its proper taxonomic classification - C. l. filchneri - rather than C. l. chanco. Neither the Tibetan wolf nor the Himalayan wolf is chanco
 * both the wolves from the Himalayas and from Tibet have been found to be the most basal of all wolves (Fan 2016), with both of them falling within the same clade (Ersmark 2016)

So where does this leave us? "The recognition of a separate species or subspecies is pending on more DNA evidence from nuclear markers (taken from the cell nucleus rather than from the cell mitochondria (Chetri 2016) Therefore, I have removed the species taxobox for C. himalayensis at this stage. However, I believe that the topic warrants its own article and should not be merged with the Tibetan wolf until further research has been done to clarify the situation. Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  09:30, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Tibetan wolf
Authors have given different scientific names for this Canis lineage in different studies and databases, including C.l. laniger, C. l. chanco, C. l. himalayensis, and C. l. filchneri, with both Himalayan wolf and Tibetan wolf used as its common names (Werhahn 2020). It is clear from numerous DNA studies that these are the same wolf (refer this article). 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 recommends that this wolf lineage is to be known as the "Himalayan wolf" and classified as Canis lupus chanco until a genetic analysis of the holotypes is available (Alvares 2019).

I assume this means Gray's chanco specimen from Chinese Tartary (a vast area and nobody knows from where specifically), and Matschie's filchneri from Qinghai province of China, will be examined to see which specimen - and therefore which taxonomic name - matches the Himalayan wolf's DNA. There exists the possibility that NEITHER specimen matches. I trust they will also include C.l. niger Sclater (1874) from Hanle in the Indian territory of Ladakh, which would have name priority over filchneri. In any case, the wolf is now called the Himalayan wolf and the text of the Tibetan wolf article has been located into this article, and the Tibetan wolf article turned into a redirect to here.  William Harris talk  10:51, 11 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Although the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group recommended it to be called Canis lupus chanco, that doesn't require changes to the article nomenclature. Why is the Mongolian wolf (Canis lupus chanco) subspecies name used as a placeholder? I understand if the name Chanco (which in Tibetan translates to Wolf, particularly referring to the Himalayan Wolf) has more correlation to the locale the Himalayan Wolf is found, or if the tri-nominal is of initial description priority. However, in order to avoid conflation, I suggest reverting the name back to Canis lupus filchneri. Anyhow, as of concurrent, there doesn't exist any definitive consensus, so until the researchers (IUCN/SSN Canid Specialist Group) conclude it's either a distinct species level taxa from Canis lupus (example : Canis himalayensis as found in NCBI taxonomy browser), or just a distinct Canis lupus clade not separate from the Gray Wolf species, the name should be changed back to the pre-recommendation nomenclature. Osteolaemus Respecter (talk) 04:16, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I suggest the admins to merge this page with the Mongolian wolf page Ishan87 (talk) 05:12, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Yellow coat colour
A new genetics study will be published shortly. The Himalayan wolf has much yellow in its coat underside, refer description. So does the yellow Labrador and some other dogs all across their coat. It is from the same gene expression, inherited from an extinct wolf which split from the dog/wolf lineage over 2 million years ago. (I will never look at a Labby the same way again!) Another variant of this gene expression is the pale/white colour of arctic-living wolves; I will include when published. William Harris (talk) 08:19, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Now included. William Harris (talk) 12:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)