Isolation and characterization of 13 microsatellites for the rare endemic shrub Tetratheca erubescens (Elaeocarpaceae)(1)

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Microsatellite markers were developed for the rare Tetratheca erubescens (Elaeocarpaceae) to assess genetic diversity and spatial structuring. METHODS AND RESULTS: We generated ca. 2.7 million sequence reads using a Personal Genome Machine (PGM) semiconductor sequencer. Using the QDD pipeline, we designed primers for >12,000 sequences with PCR product lengths of 80–480 bp. From these, 30 primer pairs were selected and screened using PCR, from which 11 loci were found to be polymorphic and amplified reliably. For a sample of 95 plants from three populations, the number of alleles observed for these 11 loci ranged from two to seven and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.06 to 0.72. No consistent evidence for null alleles or departure from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium was found for any of the 11 loci. CONCLUSIONS: These markers will enable the quantification of genetic impact of proposed mining activities on the narrow endemic T. erubescens.