The first microsatellite markers for little terns ( Sternula albifrons )
- PDF / 165,882 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 177 Views
TECHNICAL NOTE
The first microsatellite markers for little terns (Sternula albifrons) Kristina Noreikiene • Ulf M. Berthelsen Phillip Gienapp
•
Received: 4 November 2011 / Accepted: 9 November 2011 / Published online: 20 November 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract Little terns are a widespread species but most European populations are declining which presents a concern for conservation. We here present 45 novel microsatellite markers for little terns. In the 23 individuals tested from Denmark, 30 out of 45 markers tested were shown to be polymorphic with observed heterozygosities of up to 0.74. These markers are expected to prove highly useful in conservation and population genetic studies in the little tern and possibly other tern species. Keywords Little tern Microsatellite Next generation sequencing Primer Sternula albifrons Sternidae
The little tern (Sternula albifrons, Pallas 1764) is a widespread colonially breeding species which nests in open sand and gravel habitats in coastal areas and inland along rivers. This species is listed in the European Union Bird directive (Directive 2009/147/EC) since most European populations have shown decreasing trends (BirdLife International 2004; Scarton 2010). They are affected primarily by ongoing habitat destruction, predation and human disturbance (Grell 1998; Ha¨lterlein et al. 2000). Furthermore, because of their nesting habitat preference,
K. Noreikiene (&) P. Gienapp Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65, 00014 Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] U. M. Berthelsen Thorsvej 38, 3300 Frederiksværk, Denmark P. Gienapp Institute for Evolution and Ecology, University of Tu¨bingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, 72076 Tu¨bingen, Germany
populations are potentially at risk from climate change and rising sea levels (Scarton 2010). So far, there have been no molecular markers developed especially for this species. Microsatellite markers can often be used in other species than they were developed for (cross-species amplification), but success in the little tern seems to be low as we found only six out of 28 screened microsatellite markers originally developed for Sterna dougallii (Szczys et al. 2005), Larus novaehollandiae (Given et al. 2002), Larus smithsonianus (Crochet et al. 2003), Rissa tridactyla (Tirard et al. 2002) and Gelochelidon nilotica (Dawson et al. 2010) to be polymorphic (allele number from 2 to 5). Current advances in sequencing technologies however allow fast and efficient development of microsatellite markers and in this study we make use of this technology to develop suitable microsatellite markers for little terns. A phenol/chloroform/proteinase-K based method (Taggart et al. 1992) was used for extracting genomic DNA from a tissue sample of one S. albifrons individual. DNA from this individual was used for sequencing on a 454 GS FLX instrument (Roche). The raw sequences were analysed with QDD software (Megle´cz et al. 2010). QDD can not only detect microsatellites in large quan
Data Loading...
