The estuarine teleost, Acanthopagrus butcheri (Sparidae), shows low levels of polymorphism at five microsatellite loci

Micorsatellite markers are particularly useful for elucidating the detals of the population genetic structure of species that show low levels of polymorphism in other types of markers, such as allozymes and mitochondrial DNA (e. g. Shaw et al. 1999). The black bream is one such species (Chaplin et al. 1998; E. Yap et al. unpublished data). Here, we describe the isolation and characterization of microsatellite loci from black bream and then assess the level of polymorphism at five loci.