The Zoochat Photographic Guide to Bears, Pinnipeds and Hyenas.

PROTELINAE


This lineage comprises a single species:

Aardwolf (Proteles cristata)

The range of this species comprises a pair of disjunct populations in south and east Africa; the former of these extends from southern Angola and Zambia, through Namibia and Botswana to South Africa. The latter extends from the extreme southeast of Egypt in the north, through Ethiopia and Somalia as far south as central Tanzania.

Two subspecies are recognised:

P. c. cristata - photo by @ro6ca66

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P. c. septentrionalis - photo by @ro6ca66

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Here's something that will interest TLD, given his frequent musings on the taxonomic status of the Aardwolf:
High-quality carnivoran genomes from roadkill samples enable comparative species delineation in aardwolf and bat-eared fox | eLife

To illustrate the potential of this underexploited resource, we used roadkill samples to study the genomic diversity of the bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis) and the aardwolf (Proteles cristatus), both having subspecies with similar disjunct distributions in Eastern and Southern Africa. First, we obtained reference genomes with high contiguity and gene completeness by combining Nanopore long reads and Illumina short reads. Then, we showed that the two subspecies of aardwolf might warrant species status (P. cristatus and P. septentrionalis) by comparing their genome-wide genetic differentiation to pairs of well-defined species across Carnivora with a new Genetic Differentiation index (GDI) based on only a few resequenced individuals. Finally, we obtained a genome-scale Carnivora phylogeny including the new aardwolf species.
 
Here's something that will interest TLD, given his frequent musings on the taxonomic status of the Aardwolf:
High-quality carnivoran genomes from roadkill samples enable comparative species delineation in aardwolf and bat-eared fox | eLife

To illustrate the potential of this underexploited resource, we used roadkill samples to study the genomic diversity of the bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis) and the aardwolf (Proteles cristatus), both having subspecies with similar disjunct distributions in Eastern and Southern Africa. First, we obtained reference genomes with high contiguity and gene completeness by combining Nanopore long reads and Illumina short reads. Then, we showed that the two subspecies of aardwolf might warrant species status (P. cristatus and P. septentrionalis) by comparing their genome-wide genetic differentiation to pairs of well-defined species across Carnivora with a new Genetic Differentiation index (GDI) based on only a few resequenced individuals. Finally, we obtained a genome-scale Carnivora phylogeny including the new aardwolf species.

Is this the first publication of this research? I know the date says Feb. 2021 but I swear I've read this exact abstract (or at least a very similar one regarding the fox and aardwolves) a year or two ago. Perhaps it was a preliminary announcement of this work and now this is the published final product.

~Thylo
 
Is this the first publication of this research? I know the date says Feb. 2021 but I swear I've read this exact abstract (or at least a very similar one regarding the fox and aardwolves) a year or two ago. Perhaps it was a preliminary announcement of this work and now this is the published final product.
February 2021 was a year ago! However, there was also a slightly earlier release in September 2020 which could have been what you saw (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.15.297622v1.full).
 
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