Bering Sea and western North Pacific Ocean from 

 the Anadyr Gulf, south along the Kamchatka Pen- 

 insula, through the Sea of Okhotsk, and to northern 

 Japan (Andriyashev 1939; Wilimovsky et al. 1967). 

 The geographic ranges of the two types overlap in 

 some areas of the Aleutian Islands and eastern Ber- 

 ing Sea. 



Biochemical data have recently provided valuable 

 insights towards clarifying genetic relationships 

 among fishes. Findings have ranged from identify- 

 ing previously unknown species (eg., Shaklee et al. 

 1982) to grouping taxa previously considered distinct 

 (eg, Wishard et al. 1984). Biochemical data were 

 therefore used to clarify the taxonomic status of A. 

 stomias and A. evermanni through an electro- 

 phoretic examination of known individuals of both 

 types. The level of genetic difference observed in this 

 study is compared with that found between two 

 other groups of marine fishes of the Bering Sea and 

 the North Pacific Ocean. 



Materials and Methods 



Collections were made in the Bering Sea near 

 Unalaska Island by National Marine Fisheries Ser- 

 vice research vessels Oregon (lat. 53°45'N, long. 

 166°56'W, August 1980) and Miller Freeman (lat. 

 54°44'N, long. 166°29'W, February 1981). The 12 

 Kamchatka flounder (4 taken in 1980 and 8 in 1981) 

 included males and females with fork lengths 

 ranging from 24 to 43 cm. The 13 arrowtooth 

 flounder, taken only in 1981, also included both sexes 

 and ranged in fork lengths from 33 to 43 cm. Mor- 

 phological types were distinguished by the gill raker 

 counts and position of the upper eye In specimens 

 identified as Kamchatka flounder, the upper eye did 

 not reach the edge of the head and the mean total 

 gill raker count was 12.4. The upper eye of specimens 

 identified as arrowtooth flounder reached the edge 

 of the head, breaking the dorsal profile and the mean 

 total gill raker count was 15.3. Fish were frozen in- 

 tact at -20°C following collection and remained 

 frozen up to 30 mo until tissues were removed for 

 electrophoretic analysis. 



Sample preparation and electrophoresis followed 

 methods given by Utter et al. (1974). Buffer systems 

 included 1) a discontinuous tris-citric acid (gel pH 

 8.2), lithium hydroxide-boric acid (tray pH 8.0) buf- 

 fer, described by Ridgway et al. (1970); 2) a tris-boric 

 acid - 0.004 M EDTA (pH 8.5) buffer, described by 

 Markert and Faulhaber (1965); and 3) an aminopro- 

 pylmorpholine-citric acid - 0.01 M EDTA (pH 6.5) buf- 

 fer, described by Clayton and Tretiak (1972). 



Procedures of visualizing enzyme activities follow- 



ing electrophoresis were those outlined by May et 

 al. (1979). We followed the criteria of Allendorf and 

 Utter (1979) for the inference of Mendelian inheri- 

 tance in the absence of breeding data. Genetic data 

 were collected from 22 protein systems (Table 1). A 

 system of nomenclature suggested by Allendorf and 

 Utter (1979) was used where the most common 

 allelic form of a locus was designated as 100, and 

 other allelic forms were assigned values based on 

 their mobility relative to the common form. Alleles 

 migrating cathodally were given negative values. 

 Phenotypic frequencies of the overall sample (all 

 specimens of both presumed species pooled together) 

 at each polymorphic locus were tested for expected 

 binomial (i.e, Hardy-Weinberg) distributions using a 

 G statistic for goodness of fit (Sokal and Rohlf 1969; 

 Goodenough 1978). Multiple allelic cases were col- 

 lapsed to two allelic classes to allow for small sam- 

 ple sizes. A contingency table analysis of allelic fre- 

 quencies testing the null hypothesis of no difference 

 between the two groups also used the G statistic, 



Table 1.— Protein systems used in this study including tissues and 

 appropriate buffer systems for detection of suitable activity. 



1 M = muscle, L = liver, H = heart, E = eye. 

 2 1 = discontinuous tris citrate, lithium borate; 2 

 EDTA; 3 = continuous amine citrate, EDTA. 



continuous tris, borate, 



223 



