Phylogenetic Relationships among Six Species of Macaca Inferred from Ribosomal DNA Variations

Restriction maps of ribosomal DNA repeating units of six species of Macaca (M. mulatta, M. facsicularis, M. arctoides, M. assamensis, M. thibetana, M. nemestrina) and two outgroup species, Rhinopithecus bieti and Hylobates leucogenys, were constructed with 15 restriction endonucleases and 28S, 18S rDNA probes cloned from human. M. arctoides shares a common restriction map with M. assamensis. Phylogenetic tree derived from the neighbor-joining was somewhat different that derived from the maximum likelihood methods using the NEIGHBOR and RESTML program in PHYLIP version 3.5c. However, the consensus of our phylogenetic trees supports the viewpoint that M. facsicularis and M. mulatta were maybe diverged first in the genus Macaca. Further studies using DNA sequencing method are required to resolve the phylogeny of the genus Macaca.