GENETIC DIFFERENTIATION OF ARCTIC AND FAR -EASTERN CHARS OF THE GENUSSALVELINUS

Populations of Arctic char Salvelinus alpinus, Levanidov char S. levan idovi, and Dolly Varden trout S. malma (Salmonidae) were studied by me ans of electrophoretic protein analysis. Nineteen enzyme systems contr olled by 35 gene loci were analyzed. Significant differences between a llele frequencies of a number of homologous polymorphic loci were obta ined. Arctic char and Dolly Varden trout had different fixed alleles o f PGM-1 and different electorphoretic mobilities of EST-3 fractions, A rctic char and Levanidov char differed in fixed alleles of PGM-1, mobi lities of EST-3 fractions, allelic composition of the PEP-B locus; the EST-1 locus was present in S. alpinus and absent in S. levanidovi. Th e group of Arctic chars qualitatively differed from the Far Eastern ch ars by isozyme patterns of esterases. These results suggest the absenc e of gene flow between the char populations examined. Pairwise genetic distances between these species are similar to distances between each of them and Japanese char S. leucomaenis, which has an established sp ecies status.