Assigning Hippocampus guttulatus recruits to the populations of origin using microsatellites: results from a field study in the Ria Formosa (south Portugal)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology
- Keywords
- Hippocampus guttulatus, PCR, recruitment, Hippocampus hippocampus
- Copyright
- © 2016 Andrade et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Assigning Hippocampus guttulatus recruits to the populations of origin using microsatellites: results from a field study in the Ria Formosa (south Portugal) PeerJ Preprints 4:e1794v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1794v1
Abstract
The deployment of Artificial Holdfast Units (AHU) has been demonstrated as an effective tool for creating holdfast and sheltering conditions for Hippocampus guttulatus in the Ria Formosa (South Portugal). Preliminary results obtained with a pilot-scale AHU showed a high settlement rate, with recorded densities of up to 13.1 individuals.m-2. With the present study, we aim to understand weather the AHU’s contributed to attract new H. guttulatus recruits or concentrate those previously existing in these areas. Prior to the deployment of the AHU’s in a total of four focal sites, a sample of the skin filaments was collected from each H. guttulatus (n= 70) sighted in those locations. The same sampling protocol was later carried out on the recruits (n=14) sighted in one pilot-scale AHU since its deployment. Upon DNA extraction the variation of 13 highly polymorphic microsatellite loci isolated for H. guttulatus (or obtained by cross-amplification in H. hippocampus) has been analyzed. PCR reactions with labeled primers were performed using standard procedures and amplified products were run on an ABI PRISM 3130 XL Genetic Analyser©. Based on the genetic data, ONCOR software package was used to estimate the population of origin of recruits. Preliminary results indicate that more than 90% of the recruits at the AHU were assigned to the sites located up to 500 meter apart. No assignment has been demonstrated for the other sampled locations, situated further away from the AHU.
Author Comment
This is an abstract which has been accepted for the "MARES" Conference.