BIOCHEMICAL SYSTEMATICS AND POPULATION GENETIC-STRUCTURE OF ANOPHELESPSEUDOPUNCTIPENNIS, VECTOR OF MALARIA IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH-AMERICA

An electrophoretic survey of 42 populations of Anopheles pseudopunctip ennis collected throughout its known geographic distribution was perfo rmed to clarify the taxonomic status of this important malaria vector species. The results indicated strong differences in the allele freque ncies of three enzyme loci (glycerol dehydrogenase, 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase, and phosphoglucomutase) of the 33 loci analyzed. No fi xed electromorphic differences separate the populations of An. pseudop untipennis. The populations of An. pseudopunctipennis showed little ge netic divergence, with Nei distances ranging from 0 to 0.079. A compar ison of An. pseudopunctipennis data with either one of three other Ano pheles species showed a high genetic distance of 0.335 with a closely related species, An, franciscanus; 0.997 with An. crucians, and 2.355 with An, (Nyssorhynchus) albimanus. Geographic populations of An. pseu dopunctipennis were classified into three clusters; one cluster includ ed populations collected in North America (United States and Mexico) a nd Guatemala, one cluster included populations from Belize and South A merica (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina); and one cluste r was represented by populations from the Island of Grenada (type-loca lity of An. pseudopunctipennis). Based on our isozyme analyses, we def ined these clusters as three geographic populations of An. pseudopunct ipennis. Of the two mainland populations, one extends from the souther n United States south through Mexico and Guatemala, and the other exte nds north from southern South America through Central America to Beliz e. These two geographic populations converge in southern Mexico and no rthern Central America. One part of the convergence zone was identifie d in the area of eastern Guatemala and southern Belize.