page_title: Himalayan wolf
section_title: Relationship with the African golden wolf
hierarchical_section_title: Himalayan wolf / Phylogeography / Relationship with the African golden wolf
caption_attribution_description: English: The Tibetan wolves at the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, Darjeeling were found by a 2007 study to fall within the Himalayan wolf clade.
context_page_description: The Himalayan wolf is a canine of debated taxonomy. It is distinguished by its genetic markers, with mitochondrial DNA indicating that it is genetically basal to the Holarctic grey wolf, genetically the same wolf as the Tibetan wolf, and has an association with the African golden wolf. There are no striking morphological differences between the wolves from the Himalayas and those from Tibet. The Himalayan wolf lineage can be found living in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau predominantly above 4,000 metres in elevation because it has adapted to a low oxygen environment, compared with other wolves that are found only at lower elevations.
  Some authors have proposed the reclassification of this lineage as a separate 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 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. The Himalayan wolf lacks a proper morphological analysis.
context_section_description: In 2011, it was proposed that the Indian wolf, Himalayan wolf, and African golden wolf represent ancient wolf lineages, with the African golden wolf having colonised Africa prior to the northern hemisphere radiation of the Holarctic grey wolf.
  Two studies of the mitochondrial genome of both modern and extinct grey wolves (Canis lupus) have been conducted but these excluded the genetically divergent lineages of the Himalayan wolf and the Indian wolf. The ancient specimens were radiocarbon dated and stratigraphically dated, and together with DNA sequences a time-based phylogenetic tree was generated for wolves. The study inferred that the most recent common ancestor for all other Canis lupus specimens – modern and extinct – was 80,000 years before present. An analysis of the Himalayan wolf mitochondrial genome indicates that the Himalayan wolf diverged between 740,000—691,000 years ago from the lineage that would become the Holarctic grey wolf.
  Between 2011 and 2015, two mDNA studies found that the Himalayan wolf and Indian grey wolf were genetically closer to the African golden wolf than they were to the Holarctic grey 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 grey wolf. Its degree of divergence from the Holarctic grey wolf is similar to the degree of divergence of the African golden wolf from the Holarctic grey wolf. The Himalayan wolf shares a maternal lineage with the African golden wolf. It possesses a unique paternal lineage that falls between the grey wolf and the African golden 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% grey 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.
caption: Wolves in the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling
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