Genetic diversity of wild and cultured populations of Penaeus monodon using microsatellite markers

Information on the genetic diversity of Penaeus monodon throughout its natural range in Malaysia is still Hmited even though it is a highly exploited species, thus this study was undertaken to genetically characterize the prawn populations. The P. monodon samples were randomly collected from Malaysian waters and were characterized using thirty polymorphic primer pairs which showed high level of polymorphism. The total number of alleles per locus ranged from 3 to 36 with allele size ranging from 100 to 275 base pairs. The mean observed heterozygosity (0.5166) was less than the expected (0.5552), highly significant deficiencies in heterozygotes were detected in total inbreeding (F IS = 0.5500) and pair-wise genetic differentiation (F ST = 0.6308) among the populations. Both the (χ 2) chi-square and (G 2) likelihood ratio tests detected significant differences (p