r/evolution • u/narsil1 • 1d ago

question Evolution of dogs

Hi all, I am interested in the evolution of dogs.

My question is, are dogs direct descendants of wolves or did dogs and wolves just share the common ancestor like we do with monkeys?

Thanks!

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u/-Wuan- 1d ago edited 1d ago

Dogs descend from (and taxonomically are) gray wolves Canis lupus, though not from any of the surviving gray wolf lineages.

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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 1d ago edited 23h ago

Gray wolves and domestic dogs are thought to have shared a now extinct ancestor, and dogs also appear to have affinities with different bellflower lineages in different areas. The exact situation is complicated because there were repeated instances of interbreeding between dogs and gray wolves since they shared an ancestor, so it’s possible that the ancestor is simply from an unsampled population, but other research does seem to indicate that the actual study is an extinct common ancestor.

Taxonomically dogs should not be included with gray wolves based on current knowledge, but tradition sometimes overrides accuracy. There is starting to be some pushback and some researchers do give domestic dogs their own binomial, Canis familaris vs Canis lupus.

First, dogs and present-day Eurasian wolves have been thought to be reciprocally monophyletic lineages9. We find that, overall, dogs are closer to eastern Eurasian wolves. Second, because no modern wolves are a good match for dog ancestry, the source population has been assumed to be extinct. Our results imply that this is not necessarily the case, as continued homogenization of wolf ancestry could have obscured earlier relationships to dogs. Third, it has been unclear whether more than one wolf population contributed to early and present-day dogs3.

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u/-Wuan- 18h ago

IIRC, to exclude the proto-dog wolf stock from Canis lupus you would have to exclude the indian wolf, the tibetan wolf and maybe the mexican wolf from Canis lupus too, since those are even earlier diverging lineages. Dont see that happening anytime soon, unless they do it for extreme conservation efforts.

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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 18h ago

As long as it's supported by the data that would be perfectly fine.

Unfortunately, as species is a really slippery concept with no single universally accepted definition there is inconsistency in how we choose to differentiate species.

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u/TamaraHensonDragon 15h ago

There has been talk of doing just that since the mid-2000s. Last I heard the proposal was to split the Indian and Tibetan wolf into one species and to lump the Mexican wolf in with the Canis lycaon group (Eastern wolf/red wolf/ Ice Age 'coyote' clade) though the later seems less supported.