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.