AbstractTwoHsp82genes were isolated from the malaria vectorAnopheles albimanusin a single lambda phage clone. The two genes are in a head‐to‐head arrangement separated by approx. 0.9 kbp. Northern hybridizations and 5' RACE demonstrate that both genes are transcribed, have moderate levels of constitutive transcription, and are also heat‐inducible with maximum transcript accumulation occurring after 40°C heat shocks. Both genes have typical heat‐shock promoters and conserved intron boundaries in the untranslated leaders. The open reading frames are 99.6% identical differing in only nine silent nucleotide positions in the 2166 bp ORFs. However, precisely outside the ORFs, the flanking DNA of the two genes shows no evidence of common derivation. The high degree of identity between the two ORFs appears to be a result of gene conversion occurring by a process similar to that previously suspected in theA. albimanus Hsp70genes and severalD. melanogastergenes arranged as palindromes. This process probably involves a stem‐loop intermediate and is restricted in extent by flanking sequence divergence. TheseHsp82genes clearly demonstrate the extreme precision with which gene conversion can lead to proteincoding‐region homogeneity yet allow flanking DN