Wolf populations strongly declined across Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries largely due to human persecution, and by the end of the Second World War they had been eradicated from all of Central Europe and almost all of Northern Europe. It also eats rabbits, roe deer, red deer, ibexes and even small carnivores and fish. It is considered to be beneficial because it keeps the population of wild boars stable, thus allowing some respite to the endangered capercaillie populations which suffer greatly from boar predation. Females weigh 25–35 kg while Males weigh 35–55 kg. The subspecies differentiation may have developed at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Ages due to the isolation of the Iberian Peninsula when glacier barriers grew in the Pyrenees and eventually reached the Gulf of Biscay in the west and the Mediterranean in the east. The Iberian wolf differs from the more common Eurasian wolf with its slighter frame, white marks on the upper lips, the dark marks on the tail, and a pair of dark marks in its front legs that give it its subspecies name, signatus ("marked"). signatus is described by Cabrera as being 140–180 cm in head and body length, and 70–80 cm height at the shoulders. deitanus was much smaller and with more colouring than the wolves to the north. signatus had a white stroke on the cheek that joins the white throat and with a reddish snout and C. lupus had a pale, undefined stroke on the cheek that contrasts with the white on the throat C. Iberian wolf pups stimulating the alpha female to regurgitateĬabrera identified two types of wolves living in Spain. Their long-term isolation may explain the morphological and genetic differences between them. In 2020, a genomic study of Eurasian wolves found that the populations of the Dinaric Alps- Balkan Mountains region, the Iberian peninsula, and Italy diverged from each other 10,500 years ago followed by negligible gene flow between them. The National Center for Biotechnology Information/ Genbank lists the Iberian wolf under Canis lupus signatus. In 2016, a study of mitochondrial DNA sequences of both modern and ancient wolves indicated that in Europe, the two most genetically distinct haplotypes form the Italian wolf, and separately, the Iberian wolf. The Iberian wolf's skull morphometrics, mtDNA, and microsatellites differ from other European wolves. Both subspecies were nominated by the Spanish-born zoologist Ángel Cabrera in 1907. It was even smaller and more reddish in color, without dark spots. Some authors claim that the south-eastern Spanish wolf, last sighted in Murcia in the 1930s, was a different subspecies called Canis lupus deitanus. The Iberian wolf Canis lupus signatus Cabrera 1907 is classified as Canis lupus lupus by Mammal Species of the World. Along with the difficulty of their hunt by virtue of their vigilant nature and the rarity of their sightings, they were strongly desired by many European hunters as a big-game trophy. Nonetheless, very few hunting permits were given every year, strictly north of the Douro river. ĭue to population controls and damage to livestock, Iberian wolves were, as of September 2021, the only Western European subspecies of wolf whose hunting remained legal, yet only in Spain. They form the largest wolf population in Western Europe. It is home to 2,200-2,700 wolves which have been isolated from mixing with other wolf populations for over a century. It inhabits the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, which includes northwestern Spain and northern Portugal. The Iberian wolf ( Canis lupus signatus, or Canis lupus lupus, Spanish and Portuguese : Lobo ibérico), is a subspecies of grey wolf.
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