Abstract
Pangolins, or scaly anteaters, have recently been flagshiped as one of the most illegally traded mammals, and as a corollary, as potential intermediate hosts at the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to improve the traceability of their trade, we developed 20 polymorphic microsatellite loci for the white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis), the species most frequently found on African bushmeat markets. We genotyped 24 white-bellied pangolins from the Douala market, Cameroon, originating from the Ebo forest c. 75 km north-east of Douala. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 4 to 12 (mean = 6.95), and mean observed and expected heterozygosities were 0.592 (0.208–0.875) and 0.671 (0.469–0.836), respectively. Genetic diversity was higher than that cross-estimated from microsatellite loci developed for other species of pangolins. Two loci deviated from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium and two loci showed linkage disequilibrium. Genetic variance (PCoA) was increased with the addition of 13 pangolins of unknown origin, possibly suggesting that the Douala market is fed from differentiated source populations of white-bellied pangolins. Each of the 37 individuals had a unique multilocus genotype. The unbiased probability of identity (uPI) and the probability of identity among siblings (PIsibs) were both very low (uPI = 8.443 e−21; PIsibs = 1.011 e−07). Only five microsatellite loci were needed to reach the conservative value of PIsibs < 0.01, overall indicating a powerful discriminating power of our combined loci. These 20 newly developed microsatellite loci might prove useful in tracing the local-to-global trade of the white-bellied pangolin, and will hopefully contribute to the DNA-assisted implementation of future conservation strategies at reasonable costs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11033-020-05511-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The illegal wildlife trade is a flourishing, parallel economy that threatens the worldwide biodiversity [1]
The pangolin trade has very recently been pinpointed as posing a serious threat to human health, pangolins being potentially involved in the COVID19 pandemic [5, 6]
We developed and characterized 20 microsatellite loci from the genome of P. tricuspis, with the objective of providing a tool applicable at reasonable costs to range countries and international agencies that would be keen to implement the genetic tracing of the pangolin trade
Summary
The illegal wildlife trade is a flourishing, parallel economy that threatens the worldwide biodiversity [1]. The white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) is the most abundant species of pangolin in Africa, with a widespread sub-Saharan distribution covering the African lowland rainforests [30] It is one of the most frequent mammalian species observed on the stalls of the range countries’ bushmeat markets [35,36,37,38]. An unexpected level of cryptic diversity was revealed across the species range through the existence of six geographically traceable genetic lineages [17] Those results might constitute valuable support to delimitate the sources of traded pangolins at the regional scale, deeper resolution is needed to improve our ability to trace the trade at the local scale. We developed and characterized 20 microsatellite loci from the genome of P. tricuspis, with the objective of providing a tool applicable at reasonable costs to range countries and international agencies that would be keen to implement the genetic tracing of the pangolin trade
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