Origin of the domestic dog to the domestic dog and modern wolf lineages. The gray wolf is thought to be ancestral to the domestic dog, however its relationship to "C. variabilis", and the genetic contribution of "C. variabilis" to the dog, is the subject of debate. The Zhokhov Island (8,700 YBP) and Aachim (1,700 YBP) canid haplotypes fell within the domestic dog clade, cluster with S805, and also share their haplotypes with – or are one mutation away from – the Tibetan wolf ("C. l. chanco") and the recently-extinct Japanese wolf ("C. l. hodophilax"). This may indicate that these canids retained the genetic signature of
Species problem for some biologists over the objectivity of species, and some came to wonder whether individual species could be objectively real — i.e. have an existence that is independent of the human observer. In the 1920s and 1930s, Mendel's theory of inheritance and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection were joined in what was called the modern synthesis. This conjunction of theories also had a large impact on how biologists think about species. Edward Poulton anticipated many ideas on species that today are well accepted, and that were later more fully developed by Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, two of