Phylogenetic relationships among Brazilian howler monkeys, genus Alouatta (Platyrrhini, Atelidae), based on <FONT FACE=Symbol>g</FONT>1-globin pseudogene sequences

Abstract

The genus Alouatta (howler monkeys) is the most widely distributed of New World primates, and has been arranged in three species groups: the Central American Alouatta palliata group and the South American Alouatta seniculus and Alouatta caraya groups. While the latter is monotypic, the A. seniculus group encompasses at least three species (A. seniculus, A. belzebul and A. fusca). In the present study, approximately 600 base pairs of the γ 1 -globin pseudogene were sequenced in the four Brazilian species (A. seniculus, A. belzebul, A. fusca and A. caraya). Maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods yielded phylogenetic trees with the same arrangement: {A. caraya [A. seniculus (A. fusca, A. belzebul)]}. The most parsimonious tree had bootstrap values greater than 82% for all groupings, and strength of grouping values of at least 2, supporting the sister clade of A. fusca and A. belzebul. The study also confirmed the presence of a 150-base pair Alu insertion element and a 1.8-kb deletion in the γ 1 -globin pseudogene in A. fusca, features found previously in the remaining three species. The cladistic classification based on molecular data agrees with those of morphological studies, with the monospecific A. caraya group being clearly differentiated from the A. seniculus group.

A phylogeny of howler monkeys (Cebidae: <i>Alouatta</i>) based on mitochondrial, chromosomal and morphological data

“…Our results placed A. palliata as the sister taxon to the remainder taxa agreeing with previously reported topologies (Meireles et al 1999, Bonvicino et al 2000. Moreover, A. sara was the sister taxon to A. seniculus macconelli, with a strong support (decay index value of 14.5), confirming its separate species status as previous works (i.e.…”

“…Recent independent molecular analysis using the pseudogene α-1-globin (Meireles et al 1999) and cytochrome B sequences (Bonvicino et al 2001) produced partially congruent topologies to the one found with the combined data approach. These studies did not included all the species of the genus, therefore A. palliata was never included, not was A. sara.…”

Understanding the relationship between Alouatta ululata and Alouatta belzebul (Primates: Atelidae) based on cytogenetics and molecular phylogeny

“…The close affinity between A. fusca and A. belzebul, herein recovered by BA analysis, was also shown in previous reports based on g1-globin pseudogene (Meireles et al 1999), Cytochrome b gene (Bonvicino et al 2001) and several mitochondrial and nuclear genes (Cortés-Ortiz et al 2003). This close relationship, however, was not evident by multicolor, cross-species chromosome painting (de Oliveira et al 2002).…”

The primates of the Neotropics: genomes and chromosomes

“…However, a previous report ) on seven Brazilian Alouatta species showed that A. caraya was the most basal lineage of the clade (A. caraya ((A. seniculus (A. nigerrima (A. stramineus, A. macconnelli))) (A. guariba, A. belzebul))). This arrangement, based on cytochrome b DNA data confirmed the ar-rangement (A. caraya (A. seniculus (A. guariba, A. belzebul))) proposed by Meireles et al (1995Meireles et al ( , 1999 Karyotypic studies of Alouatta showed that diploid chromosome number varies from 2n = 43 to 54. In some species, like A. seniculus the diploid number may vary due to presence of different numbers of microchromosomes.…”