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Taxonomy Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'General Zoo Discussion' started by Kakapo, 14 Dec 2018.

  1. ZooBinh

    ZooBinh Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I meant like..... sources.....but whatever....
     
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  2. Pertinax

    Pertinax Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I read National Geographic articles on the subject of whether Red Wolf was a true species or a product of hybridisation back in the 1980's also. At that time the thinking seemed to be it was a pure species on the point of extinction by being overun by a wolf/coyote swarm.
     
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  3. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Until I looked it up, I didn't immediately realise to which species you were referring - I had never heard of that particular name for Aplodontia rufa :)

    As such, the first thing to pop into my head was this bloke:

    [​IMG]
     
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  4. ThylacineAlive

    ThylacineAlive Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I have not seen one and while I would really love to, I'd put it lower than the others on my list.

    ~Thylo
     
  5. Kakapo

    Kakapo Well-Known Member

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    Sources? Every hour of my entire life (except those that I pass working, eating, sleeping or walking) is dedicated to look at sources and use them for my selfmade lifeform encyclopedia. Really do you pretend that I put my entire 34 year life (including every second) in a thread in Zoochat for put trillions of sources???? Appart from impossible to do, it could be resumed much better in just this phrase: Sources? Every easily accesible and some of non so easily accesible ones in the world. This make the "knowlegde" part and the other half is put in other or another way by the "logic" part (choosing the sources that convince me more in each case).

    You finally happy? Can then we finish this discussion? Maybe even delete it (as I never wanted to have it and much less be left as the starter)?
     
  6. TinoPup

    TinoPup Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Any time you are saying something contrary, you need to provide sources that back your claim up. "Life" and "knowledge" aren't sources, just like "google" isn't. If that was so, people would never have to provide sources in papers, books, etc. Every thought comes from somewhere. I've tried understanding what you're trying to say and where you're coming from in previous posts, but this one makes you look like a massive snob (to put it in board-friendly terms).
     
  7. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I have no idea who that is.

    I don't like the name Mountain Beaver because just every part of it is wrong. So it's always going to be a Sewellel to me.
     
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  8. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Really? That makes you wrong, you realise? :p

    On the topic of canids in North America, where would be the places to see pure (or pure enough) Red Wolf, Grey Wolf, Eastern Wolf, and Coyote, and where would one theoretically have to ignore them as hybrids?
     
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  9. DesertRhino150

    DesertRhino150 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I recently got the 2nd edition of the Field Guide to the Carnivores of the World for my birthday and in that the red and Eastern wolves are listed alongside the Eastern coyote as all being grey wolf-coyote hybrids to some degree.

    More interesting to me is the recent change in the Eupleridae species. According to this book, there has been recent genetic analysis that has lumped both the falanouc species together, lumped the Durrell's vontsira with the brown-tailed vontsira and found the Grandidier's vontsira to be a subspecies of the broad-striped vontsira, instead of its own species. Does anyone know where to find the study that got this information?
     
  10. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    That will refer to this study:
    https://www.researchgate.net/profil...n-mitochondrial-and-nuclear-DNA-sequences.pdf

    I am just going to read that for breakfast now ;)
     
  11. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    It doesn't help that the book doesn't give sources, but the paper is this one from last year: https://www.researchgate.net/profil...n-mitochondrial-and-nuclear-DNA-sequences.pdf

    And @lintworm posted while I was skim-reading the paper!
     
  12. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Just reading through it, both lumps seem sound, especially with regards to the Durrell's and Brown-tailed vontsira. It is interesting that the genetic difference between Grandidier's and Broad-striped vontsira are so small, as they can differ quite a lot in morphology, but their reasoning is sound.

    At least it means I have seen every species of the subfamily, 3 of which in the wild :p.
     
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  13. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Are you referring to wild or captive animals?
     
  14. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Brian Sewell, a very pretentious art critic and historian who - until his death a few years ago - was one of those talking heads who always got wheeled out on television at the slightest opportunity :p
     
  15. ThylacineAlive

    ThylacineAlive Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I do :p

    That's actually a relatively easy question to answer. In the wild Red Wolves only live in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina and I believe there are a few introduced to the St. Vincent Island off the coast of Florida. The animals on the island may not be true wild wolves, I don't know too much about them. North Carolina wants to exterminate their wolf population because, you know, wolves are bad so it's very likely that in a few years you can only see this species in zoos again.
    Grey Wolves, to the best of my knowledge, do not readily hybridize with Coyotes (another reason I lean towards splitting lycaon) so really anywhere where they're reintroduced except for the Great Lakes region will have pure animals. The population living around the Great Lakes appears to be a hybrid population between lupus and lycaon. C. l. occidentalis is the subspecies now found throughout the US, including Alaska, except for the small populations of baileyi living in Arizona and New Mexico.
    While the occasional pure Eastern Wolf may still be around here and there, this species cannot be reliably found in the US. The nucleus of the pure wild population is found in the Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. I'm not sure how easy it is to spot the animals here, but I know @Vision managed to hear animals howling back in September 2017.
    The Coyote should be pure everywhere they're currently found except for anywhere Eastern Wolves once lived. The hybrid population is referred to as the Eastern Coyote or Coywolf, Canis latrans "var.", and are notably larger, have longer legs, different dental development, have less in-litter fighting as pups, reach sexuality maturity later, and have different coloration to pure Coyotes. They're also known to be more predatory rather than scavengers and will hunt in packs to take down animals as large as adult Moose. In the US, the hybrids have been observed in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Mayland, and Delaware. In Canada, they have been observed in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. The widespread range of the hybrid population poses a major risk to the remaining pure Eastern Wolves, and their presence throughout the wolf's range is largely why I suspect the taxa is much, much more endangered than people realize.

    ~Thylo
     
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  16. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    The Red Wolves on St. Vincent Island are pure. However, if you are looking for pure Red Wolves in the wild, the North Carolina population is much larger.
     
  17. ThylacineAlive

    ThylacineAlive Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I know they're pure, I meant I wasn't sure if they live truly wild or are a semi-wild managed population.

    St. Vincent is a weird island to me, it's been home to a wide variety of introduced exotics such as zebra, eland, Blackbuck, and junglefowl and is still currently home to a wild population of sambar deer.

    ~Thylo
     
  18. ZooBinh

    ZooBinh Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Well, you many times say something to the contrary of others. I just wonder like, a website or a book that you got the information from (Wikipedia is not a source, e.g "iucnredlist.org".). This is a really snobby response, and you may at least want to put some respect with it. Taxonomy is a debatable topic, so don't be too upset with questions because you may find yourself questioning others.
     
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  19. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    The Red Wolves and Sambar are truly wild (even if they are introduced). The others you listed are semi-wild captives.
     
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  20. DesertRhino150

    DesertRhino150 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    On the subject of red wolves, I recently noticed this study which has found that a population of canids on Galveston Island in Texas contain a high level of red wolf genes, probably because of their isolation from coyotes on the mainland. There is the potential for the admixed canids to be entered into the captive breeding programme to try and recover 'extinct' red wolf genes.

    I have included the full article below:
    https://phys.org/news/2018-12-future-red-wolves-galveston-island.html
     
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