Dusicyon H[amilton], Smith, 1839. Jardine's Natur. Libr., 9:248.

TYPE SPECIES: Cam's antarcticus Bechstein, 1799 (= C. australis Kerr, 1792), by subsequent designation by Cabrera (1931).

COMMENTS: There has been general disagreement as to generic classification of the South American canids, with most of the disagreement centered on the species australis, culpaeus, griseus, gymnocercus, microtis, sechurae, thous, and vetulus. Van Gelder (1978) proposed placing these taxa into Canis and giving only subgeneric recognition. The other extreme is best represented by Cabrera (1931) who recognized 5 genera for this group. Langguth (1969) first followed Cabrera's classification, but later (1975) decided to group most taxa into Canis, because he felt differences were not sufficient to warrant generic distinctions. The phenetic approaches of Clutton-Brock et al. (1976) and Wayne and O'Brien (1987) confirmed the close similarities of these taxa. Berta's (1987, 1988) phylogenetic hypothesis is followed here.