Mogollon mountain wolf

Mogollon mountain wolf
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species: C. lupus
Subspecies: C. l. mogollonensis
Trinomial name
Canis lupus mogollonensis
Goldman, 1937[1][2]

The Mogollon mountain wolf (Canis lupus mogollonensis) is a possible subspecies of gray wolf whose range once included southern and western Texas and northeastern Mexico. It is darker than its more northern cousins, and has a highly arched frontal bone.[3]

As of 2005,[4] it is considered a valid subspecies by MSW3, though it is classed as either a synonym of C. l. nubilus or C. l. baileyi by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.[5]

History

Because of its overlapping range with the Mexican wolf, along with the Texas wolf, it was proposed by biologists Bogan and Mehlhop for the Mogollon mountain wolf and the Texas wolf to be conglomerated under the same taxonomic name and subspecies as the Mexican wolf. This was because the Mogollon mountain wolf was seen as merely a possible middle subspecies between the Mexican wolf and the Southern Rocky Mountains wolf, thus making it unnecessary to distinguish taxonomically. This was accepted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1982 and a "zone of subspecies intergradation" was recognized soon thereafter, extending from the southern Rocky Mountains to the northern tip of the Mexican wolf's range.[6]

References

  1. E. A. Goldman (1937). "The Wolves of North America". Journal of Mammalogy 18 (1): 37–45. doi:10.2307/1374306. JSTOR 1374306.
  2. "Canis lupus mogollonensis" – NCBI. Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved on 2012-12-31.
  3. Glover, A. (1942), Extinct and vanishing mammals of the western hemisphere, with the marine species of all the oceans, American Committee for International Wild Life Protection, pp. 218-219.
  4. Wozencraft, W.C. (2005). "Order Carnivora". In Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M. Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.
  5. Chambers SM, Fain SR, Fazio B, Amaral M (2012). "An account of the taxonomy of North American wolves from morphological and genetic analyses". North American Fauna 77: 1–67. doi:10.3996/nafa.77.0001. Retrieved 2013-07-02.
  6. Carroll, C., M. K. Phillips, and C. A. Lopez-Gonzalez (2005) Spatial analysis of restoration potential and population viability of the wolf (Canis lupus) in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Klamath Center for Conservation Research mirror

External links

Wikispecies has information related to: Canis lupus mogollonensis
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, December 01, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.