Howl variation across Himalayan, North African, Indian, and Holarctic wolf clades: tracing divergence in the world’s oldest wolf lineages using acoustics

摘要: Vocal divergence within species often corresponds to morphological, environmental, and genetic differences between populations. Wolf howls are long-range signals that encode individual, group, subspecies differences, yet the factors may drive this variation poorly understood. Furthermore, taxonomic division Canis genus remains contended additional data required clarify position of Himalayan, North African, Indian wolves lupus. We recorded 451 from 3 most basal wolf lineages-Himalayan C. lupus chanco-Himalayan haplotype, African lupaster, pallipes wolves-and present a howl acoustic description each clade. With an 619 7 Holarctic subspecies, we used random forest classifier principal component analysis on 9 parameters assess whether exhibit compared other howls. Generally, both exhibited high mean fundamental frequency (F0) short duration In contrast, Himalayan typically had lower F0, unmodulated frequencies, The acoustically distinct differed significantly wolves. Along with influence body size environmental these results suggest and/or geographic distance play important role in understanding across subspecies.