Development of eleven polymorphic microsatellite loci for the sea snake Emydocephalus annulatus (Elapidae: Hydrophiinae) and cross-species amplification for seven species in the sister genus Aipysurus

Abstract

We developed eleven microsatellite loci for the turtleheaded sea snake, Emydocephalus annulatus, from partial genomic DNA libraries using a repeat enrichment protocol. Nine loci had high numbers of alleles (11–32) per locus, while the other two loci had six alleles each. All eleven loci amplified successfully and were polymorphic in six of seven sea snake species from the sister genus Aipysurus, while ten loci amplified successfully for the seventh species. Based on these highly successful cross-amplifications we expect these loci to be useful markers for evaluating population genetic structure, gene flow, relatedness and effective population sizes for all Aipysurus group sea snakes.