Authors: Peter Steinhart

The Company of Wolves (57 page)

In 1992, in a paper entitled “Another Look at Wolf Taxonomy” presented at the International Wolf Symposium in Edmonton, Alberta, Ronald Nowak of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggested combining these twenty-four subspecies into five, as follows:

arctos
would include
bernardi
and
orion
baileyi
lycaon
nubilus
would include
beothucus, crasso don, fuscus, hudsonicus, irremotus, labradorius, ligoni, manningi, mogollonensis, monstrabilis
, and
youngi
occidentalis
would include
alces, columbianus, griseoalbus, mackenzii, pambasileus
, and
tundrarum

V. E. Sokolov and O. L. Rossolimo in “Taxonomy and Variability,” a paper included in D. I. Bibikov’s
The Wolf: History, Systematics, Morphology and Ecology
(Moscow: U.S.S.R. Academy of Science, 1985), recognized nine subspecies of
Canis lupus
in the Old World:

Canis lupus albus
—the large wolf of Eurasian tundra from Finland to Kamchatka

Canis lupus campestris
—a small wolf of the deserts and steppes of Central Asia

Canis lupus chanco
(sometimes referred to by other authorities as
Canis lupus laniger
—the Tibetan wolf)—a medium-size wolf of China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and southwestern Russia

Canis lupus cubanensis
—in the Caucasus, Turkey, and Iran

Canis lupus desertorum
—in Kazakhstan

Canis lupus hattai
—an extinct species from the Japanese island of Hokkaido

Canis lupus hodophilax
—an extinct species from the other Japanese islands

Canis lupus lupus
—the common wolf of Europe and forested Russia

Canis lupus pallipes
—a small wolf from India and the Middle East

Other authorities might have added
Canis lupus arabs
, a small, light-colored wolf from southern Arabia, which Sokolov and Rossolimo regarded as a synonym of
pallipes; Canis lupus lupaster
, in Egypt, which many authorities regard as a subspecies of
Canis aureus
, the golden jackal; and
Canis lupus communis
, from the Ural Mountains of Russia and Siberia.

Nowak suggested combining
campestris, chanco
, and
desertorum
with
lupus
. His analysis would also recognize
pallipes, cubanensis, albus, communis
, and
hattai
. He did not analyze
arabs, lupaster
, or
hodophilax
.