CONTRIBUTION OF GENETIC DISTANCES STUDIES TO THE TAXONOMY OF ATELES, PARTICULARLY ATELES PANISCUS PANISCUS AND ATELES PANISCUS CHAMEK

We studied 20 electrophoretic loci in two populations of Ateles (Atele s paniscus paniscus and Ateles paniscus chamek). We observed intrapopu lational variation at the following loci: esterase D, glyoxalase 1, ad enosine deaminase (A. p. chamek) and carbonic anhydrase 2 (A. p. panis cus). The two populations share the most frequent alleles at 17 loci, but we noted great differences in glyoxalase 1, adenosine deaminase an d phosphoglucomutase 1. A. p. paniscus is monomorphic for the GLO11 a llele, which has a frequency of 6% in A. p. chamek. They did not share alleles in relation to the ADA and PGM1 loci. We found a CA2 allele, named here CA21, which has not been described previously in other neo tropical primates (Sampaio et al., 1991a), in A. p. paniscus. The pres ent results suggest that the geographical isolation represented by the Rio Amazonas has lasted long enough to support this level of divergen ce. These observations taken together with chromosomal findings, led u s to endorse the proposal of two distinct species: Ateles paniscus and Ateles chamek.