Isolation and characterization of microsatellite loci in the Mediterranean shore crab Carcinus aestuarii (Decapoda, Portunidae)

We characterized nine polymorphic microsatellites in the Mediterranean shore crab Carcinus aestuarii (Decapoda: Portunidae). Microsatellites were isolated from a partial genomic library enriched for multiple motifs. All loci were polymorphic, with number of alleles ranging from two to 16 and a mean observed heterozygosity of 0.75. Seven loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and two showed weak heterozygote deficiency. No linkage disequilibrium was found between loci. In addition, we tested Hardy-Weinberg and linkage equilibrium of three Carcinus maenas loci, already reported to cross-amplify in C. aestuarii. These molecular markers will be potentially useful to investigate genetic structure of this species.