Wild dogs and village dogs in New Guinea: were they different?

Abstract

Recent accounts of wild-living dogs in New Guinea argue that these animals qualify as an ‘evolutionarily significant unit’ that is distinct from village dogs, have been and remain genetically isolated from village dogs and merit taxonomic recognition at, at least, subspecific level. These accounts have paid little attention to reports concerning village dogs. This paper reviews some of those reports, summarises observations from the interior lowlands of Western Province and concludes that: (1) at the time of European colonisation, wild-living dogs and most, if not all, village dogs of New Guinea comprised a single though heterogeneous gene pool; (2) eventual resolution of the phylogenetic relationships of New Guinean wild-living dogs will apply equally to all or most of the earliest New Guinean village-based dogs; and (3) there remain places where the local village-based population of domestic dogs continues to be dominated by individuals whose genetic inheritance can be traced to precolonisation canid forebears. At this time, there is no firm basis from which to assign a unique Linnaean name to dogs that live as wild animals at high altitudes of New Guinea.