Rapid anthropogenic land use change threatens the primary habitat of the Chestnut short-tailed bat (
Vestimentiferan tubeworms are some of the most recognizable fauna found at deep-sea cold seeps, isolated environments where hydrocarbon rich fluids fuel biological communities. Several studies have investigated tubeworm population structure; however, much is still unknown about larval dispersal patterns at Gulf of Mexico (GoM) seeps. As such, researchers have applied microsatellite markers as a measure for documenting the transport of vestimentiferan individuals. In the present study, we investigate the utility of microsatellites to be cross-amplified within the escarpiid clade of seep vestimentiferans, by determining if loci originally developed for
Seventy-seven
Microsatellite pre-screening identified 13 (27%) of the
The ability to develop “universal” microsatellites reduces the costs associated with these analyses and allows researchers to track and investigate a wider array of taxa, which is particularly useful for organisms living at inaccessible locations such as the deep sea. Our study highlights that non-species specific microsatellites can be amplified across large evolutionary distances and still yield similar findings as species-specific loci. Further, these results show that
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10020127
- Journal Name:
- PeerJ
- Volume:
- 4
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- Article No. e2366
- ISSN:
- 2167-8359
- Publisher:
- PeerJ
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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