Arctic wolf drawing

A study by Chambers et al. (2012) using autosomal microsatellite DNA and Mitochondrial DNA data indicate that the Arctic wolf has no unique haplotypes which suggests that its colonization of the Arctic Archipelago from the North American mainland was relatively recent, and thus not sufficient to warrant subspecies status. During a meeting assembled in 2014 by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, one speaker, Robert K. Wayne, mentioned he disagreed with the conclusion that a subspecies had to be genetically distinct, believing that different subspecies could slowly grade into each other – suggesting that although it was impossible to determine if an individual wolf was one subspecies or the next using DNA, the population of Arctic wolves as a whole could be distinguished by the looking at the proportions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP): i. e. Arctic wolves could be distinguished by having three wolves in the putative population with a specific SNP, whereas another subspecies could be distinguished by having 20 wolves with that SNP. Wayne furthermore stated that he believed the habitat in which the wolf happened to be found was a good enough characteristic to distinguish a subspecies.