PHYLOGENETIC-RELATIONSHIPS OF PECCARIES BASED ON MITOCHONDRIAL CYTOCHROME-B DNA-SEQUENCES

We compared 1,047 base pairs (bp) of the mitochondrial cytochrome b ge ne from the three species of extant peccaries-the collared peccary (Pe cari tajacu), the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), and the Chaco an peccary (Catagonus wagneri); three suids-domestic pig (Sus scrofa), warthog (Phacochoerus aethiopicus), and babirusa (Babyrousa babyrussa )-were used as outgroups. Phylogenetic analyses using parsimony and ma ximum likelihood resulted in trees that placed the Chacoan peccary and the white-lipped peccary in a clade separate from the collared peccar y. This relationship remains tentative, however as tree topologies sup porting alternate hypotheses were not significantly worse than the max imum Likelihood tree. Estimated times since divergence based on cytoch rome b suggest that Tayassu and Catagonus diverged in the late Pliocen e, perhaps concommitant with the invasion of South America by tayassui ds. The divergence of the Pecari lineage from that of the other two sp ecies was estimated to be at 3.4-7.4 x 10(6) years ago, supporting the hypothesis that these two clades diverged in North America before eit her clade colonized South America. Our results support the classificat ion of extant species of peccaries into three genera.