THE LOCAL-DISTRIBUTION OF HIGHLY DIVERGENT MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA HAPLOTYPES IN TOQUE MACAQUES MACACA-SINICA AT POLONNARUWA, SRI-LANKA

Surveys of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation in macaque monkeys have revealed extremely high levels of intraspecific divergence among hapl otypes. One consistent pattern that has emerged from these studies is that divergent haplotypes are geographically segregated so that sampli ng a few matrilines from a given region shows them to be identical, or a closely related subset of haplotypes. Geographically structured mtD NA variation has also been commonly observed in other taxa. In this st udy, haplotype variation and distribution are studied in detail within a local population of toque macaques. The results show that highly di vergent haplotypes, differing by 3.1% in their nucleotide sequences, c oexist in this population and that they may be spatially segregated ev en on this micro-geographic scale. Furthermore, these differences are maintained between social groups that exchange male migrants, and thus nuclear genes, frequently.