Polymorphic Microsatellite Markers For the Yellowfin Tuna (\u3ci\u3eThunnus albacares\u3c/i\u3e)

The yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) is a warm water tuna of conservation concern related to recent declines in abundance reported in various parts of its range. In this work, 24 new microsatellites markers were developed for this species using Illumina paired-end sequencing and a direct ‘Seq-to-SSR’ approach. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 4 to 29 and estimates of expected heterozygosity were from 0.473 to 0.948 (n = 35). Genotype frequencies at 8 of the microsatellites departed significantly from Hardy–Weinberg expectations, possibly reflecting occurrence of null alleles. The remaining 16 loci will be valuable to conservation genetics studies of yellowfin tuna