Isolation and characterization of 12 microsatellite loci to study connectivity in the yellow jawfish Opistognathus aurifrons

Abstract

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are conservation strategies to preserve the degradation of marine ecosystems by allowing species to naturally recover. Central to MPA design is the assumption of connectivity in marine populations over hundreds of kilometers, but only in a few handful of species the scale of connectivity has been estimated. To facilitate the study of connectivity of reef fishes, we newly developed 12 microsatellite loci for the yellow jawfish Opistognathus aurifrons. We tested all microsatellite loci in eight Caribbean populations with various degrees of divergence. We found between 9 and 26 alleles per locus with polymorphism that ranged from 0.652 to 0.976. All loci were in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, except loci 1588 and 7983. The described markers provide the most sensitive tools yet available to study connectivity at the finest spatial scale and evaluate if current networks of Caribbean MPAs maximize the potential for the recovery of reef fish populations.