Nine novel, polymorphic microsatellite markers for the study of threatened Caribbean acroporid corals

I B Baums; M K Devlin-Durante; L Brown; J H Pinzón

doi:10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02581.x

Nine novel, polymorphic microsatellite markers for the study of threatened Caribbean acroporid corals

Mol Ecol Resour. 2009 Jul;9(4):1155-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02581.x. Epub 2009 Feb 26.

Authors

I B Baums¹, M K Devlin-Durante, L Brown, J H Pinzón

Affiliation

¹ 208 Mueller Laboratory, Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. baums@psu.edu

PMID: 21564860
DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2009.02581.x

Abstract

Caribbean reef-building corals in the genus Acropora have been declining dramatically since the 1980s and are now listed as threatened. The study of their complex reproductive system (mixed asexual and sexual) and their population structure requires highly polymorphic nuclear genetic markers. Of eight previously developed microsatellite loci for A. palmata, only five behaved in a Mendelian fashion and only four reliably amplified the sister species, A. cervicornis. Here, nine novel microsatellite markers are presented that dramatically increase the power to distinguish between asexual and sexual reproductive events and may help to refine population boundaries and gene flow across their ranges.