Development and characterization of novel microsatellite loci for Lusitanian toadfish, Halobatrachus didactylus.

Carla Sousa-Santos,Paulo J Fonseca,Maria Clara P Amorim

doi:10.7717/peerj.731

Abstract

The Lusitanian toadfish Halobatrachus didactylus is an eastern Atlantic polygynous species showing male paternal care. In this paper we describe 5 novel microsatellite loci obtained by 454 GS-FLX Titanium pyrosequencing of a microsatellite-enriched library. The number of alleles per polymorphic locus varied between 2 and 4, and the observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.082 to 0.600. No significant deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium was found and there was no evidence for linkage disequilibrium. These markers will be of great value for paternity studies and population genetics of this species.

Highlights

Microsatellite markers (Tautz, 1989), i.e., highly variable DNA sequences of tandem repeats of 1–6 nucleotides with codominant inheritance, are widely used genetic markers in areas as diverse as phylogeography (e.g., Fauvelot & Borsa, 2011), molecular ecology (e.g., Gardner et al, 2011) and parentage analysis (e.g., Jones et al, 2010)
In this work we describe novel microsatellite loci for Lusitanian toadfish Halobatrachus didactylus (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) (Batrachoididae), obtained by 454 GS-FLX Titanium pyrosequencing that will be of great value for population genetics studies, namely to conduct paternity studies aiming to clarify the mating dynamics of this species
We tested for the presence of linkage disequilibrium (LD) between pairs of loci using GENEPOP but no evidence for LD was detected (p-values ranged from 0.18 to 1.00, mean = 0.62)

Summary

Introduction

Microsatellite markers (Tautz, 1989), i.e., highly variable DNA sequences of tandem repeats of 1–6 nucleotides with codominant inheritance, are widely used genetic markers in areas as diverse as phylogeography (e.g., Fauvelot & Borsa, 2011), molecular ecology (e.g., Gardner et al, 2011) and parentage analysis (e.g., Jones et al, 2010). In this work we describe novel microsatellite loci for Lusitanian toadfish Halobatrachus didactylus (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) (Batrachoididae), obtained by 454 GS-FLX Titanium pyrosequencing that will be of great value for population genetics studies, namely to conduct paternity studies aiming to clarify the mating dynamics of this species. How to cite this article Sousa-Santos et al (2015), Development and characterization of novel microsatellite loci for Lusitanian toadfish, Halobatrachus didactylus.

Results

Conclusion