2020/12/08 by Jonas Niemann, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi +4 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Immunology and Microbiology · #Forensic and Genetic Research #Rabies epidemiology and control #Human-Animal Interaction Studies #Gray wolf #Subspecies #Pleistocene #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Geography #Lineage (genetic) #Zoology #Biology #Ecology #Archaeology #Paleontology #Canis #Gene
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.101904
openalex publication_date 2020/12/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The Japanese or Honshū wolf was one the most distinct gray wolf subspecies due to its small stature and endemicity to the islands of Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. Long revered as a guardian of farmers and travellers, it was persecuted from the 17th century following a rabies epidemic, which led to its extinction in the early 20th century. To better understand its evolutionary history, we sequenced the nuclear genome of a 19th century Honshū wolf specimen to an average depth of coverage of 3.7✕. We find Honshū wolves were closely related to a lineage of Siberian wolves that were previously believed to have gone extinct in the Late Pleistocene, thereby extending the survival of this ancient lineage until the early 20th century. We also detected significant gene flow between Japanese dogs and the Honshū wolf, corroborating previous reports on Honshū wolf dog interbreeding.