ABSTRACT. The topmouth culter (Culter alburnus) is an economically important freshwater fish, which is widely distributed throughout large rivers, reservoirs, and lake areas of China. We report here the isolation and characterization of 32 new polymorphic microsatellite loci isolated from genomic DNA in this species enriched by (CA) 12 and (GA) 12 probes. The variability of these microsatellites was tested on 30 individuals cultured. The average allele number was 6.6 per locus, ranging from 3 to 12. The observed heterozygosity was from 0.4667 to 0.9000, and the expected heterozygosity was from 0.6163 to 0.9085. After using Bonferroni's correction for multiple tests, there was no evidence of linkage disequilibrium between pairs of loci, but deviations from HardyWeinberg equilibrium were found in 3 loci. These microsatellites can be used to study QTL of economic importance, population genetic diversity and the construction of genetic maps for C. alburnus in the future.

Global climate change is causing the Mediterranean coastal area of Israel to gradually acquire tropical characteristics. Rising sea surface temperatures in the eastern Mediterranean basin have facilitated the introduction, settlement and establishment of hundreds of alien species (Zenetos et al. 2012). The vast majority of these exotic species are of Indo-Pacific origin. We report the occurrence of the genus Dichotomaria in the eastern Mediterranean on the basis of specimens identified as Dichotomaria cf. obtusata (J. Ellis & Solander) Lamarck. Tetrasporophytes with sporangial initials were identified morphologically and confirmed molecularly using plastid rbcL sequences. We also discuss possible paths of introduction of this and other alien species into the Levantine Sea.