Rarest dog: Ethiopian wolves are genetically vulnerable

Populations of the world's rarest dog, the Ethiopian wolf, are genetically fragmenting, scientists say.

Fewer than 500 of Africa's only wolf species are thought to survive.

Now a 12-year study of Ethiopian wolves living in the Ethiopian highlands has

found there is little gene flow between the small remaining populations.

That places the wolves at greater risk of extinction from disease, or habitat degradation.

In a study published in the journal , Dada Gottelli of the Zoological Society of London and

colleagues in Oxford, UK and Berlin, Germany, quantified the genetic diversity,

population structure and patterns of gene flow among 72 wild-living Ethiopian wolves.

Red dog

The team sampled wolves living within six of the

remaining seven remnant populations, as well as from one population at Mount

Choke, that has since become extinct.

They found that genetic diversity was relatively high for a species that has

declined to fewer than 500 individuals.

That may be because discrete populations of wolves survived in Africa after