Genetic Diversity Levels in Fishery-Exploited Spiny Lobsters of the Genus Palinurus (Decapoda: Achelata)

7 páginas, 2 figuras , 3 tablas, 1 apéndice con 2 tablas.

Most fisheries involving spiny lobsters of the genus Palinurus have been overexploited during the last decades, so there is a raising concern about management decisions for these valuable resources. A total of 13 microsatellite DNA loci recently developed in Palinurus elephas were assayed in order to assess genetic diversity levels in every known species of the genus. Microsatellite markers gave amplifications and showed polymorphism in all species, with gene diversity values varying from 0.650 6 0.077 SD (Palinurus barbarae) to 0.792 6 0.051 SD (Palinurus elephas). Most importantly, when depth distribution was taken into account, shallower water species consistently showed larger historical effective population sizes than their deeper-water counterparts. This could explain why deeper-water species are more sensitive to overfishing, and would indicate that overexploitation may have a larger impact on their longterm genetic diversity.

This work was supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship awarded by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia to FP (2006FIC-00082). Research was funded by projects CGL2006-13423 and CTM2007-66635 from the Ministerio de Educacio´n y Ciencia. The authors are part of the research group 2009SGR-636, 2009SGR-655 and 2009SGR-1364 of the Generalitat de Catalunya. FP acknowledges an EU-Synthesys grant (GBTAF- 4474).

Peer reviewed