Full text loading...
Current Herpetology
Abstract
Abstract:
The Hokkaido salamander, Hynobius retardatus (Caudata: Hynobiidae), is a common salamander species distributed throughout Hokkaido Island, Japan. Because of its regional morphological diversity and flexible phenotypic plasticity, its demographic history and the causes of its distribution patterns are of intrinsic interest to evolutionary biologists. To address these issues, a microsatellite marker is an ideal genetic marker for inferring gene flows and hybridizations between populations on a fine scale. We therefore utilized an Ion PGM™ sequencing system to screen the H. retardatus genome for microsatellite markers. As the result, we identified 12 polymorphic markers. We then tested the usefulness of these markers in H. retardatus by genotyping 20 individuals from each of two regional populations (the Erimo and Nopporo populations). The total number of alleles ranged from 3 to 8, and the expected heterozygosities per locus ranged from 0.049 to 0.803. We expect the developed markers to be useful for future studies of demography of this species.
We thank Jun Kitano and Osamu Kishida for helpful discussions. We are also grateful to Kanako Onizuka, Mai Fujimi, and Chie Iwamoto for helping carry out our experiments. This work was supported by a KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (23247004) to K.N. and a KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up (24870002) to M.M. from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Data & Media loading...