Characterization of ten novel microsatellite markers in Awaous guamensis with comments on cross amplification in congeners and other amphidromous fish native to Hawai’i

Abstract

Ten polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated for the Awaous guamensis, an amphidromous gobiid common to the Hawai’ian islands. The loci show a moderate to high degree of allelic diversity and observed levels of heterozygosity ranged from 0.13 to 0.87. Most loci conformed to Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) and showed little evidence of linkage disequilibrium (LD). Our results indicate that all of the markers will be useful for assessing gene flow and population structure among evolutionary lineages of A. guamensis, and many could be useful for similar studies of congeners and other species native to Hawai’i.