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25 February 2020 Morphometric analysis of skull shape reveals unprecedented diversity of African Canidae
Fabio Andrade Machado, Pablo Teta
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Abstract

We conducted a geometric morphometric analysis to investigate the morphological variation of the golden wolf, Canis lupaster, and to clarify the morphological and taxonomic affinities of different taxa of the genera Canis and Lupulella. We suggest that the variation observed within the complex of Canis lupaster may be incompatible with what would be expected for a single species. We hypothesize that the nominal form C. l. soudanicus is a synonym of Lupulella adusta rather than being part of the golden wolf complex. The subspecies C. l. bea has a generalized jackal morphology (i.e., clusters together with L. mesomelas and C. aureus) and C. l. lupaster occupies an intermediate morphospace position, between jackal-like forms and wolf-like forms. These results contrast with previously published molecular analysis in which mitochondrial data failed to identify differences among golden wolf populations, and nuclear evidence points to the existence of groups that are incompatible with those recovered by morphological analysis. Regarding other jackals, our results depict the absence of morphological overlap between L. m. mesomelas and L. m. schmidti and no differences between putative subspecies of L. adusta. We call attention to the need for more integrative approaches to solve the taxonomic questions in various African Canidae.

© 2020 American Society of Mammalogists, www.mammalogy.org
Fabio Andrade Machado and Pablo Teta "Morphometric analysis of skull shape reveals unprecedented diversity of African Canidae," Journal of Mammalogy 101(2), 349-360, (25 February 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyz214
Received: 11 April 2019; Accepted: 21 December 2019; Published: 25 February 2020
KEYWORDS
Canis anthus
Canis aureus
Canis lupus
Geometric morphometric
linear discriminant analysis
taxonomy
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