Characterization of microsatellite loci in Brachyderes rugatus, the Canary Islands pine weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

Abstract

The Canary Island pine weevil Brachyderes rugatus (Wollaston) consists of four allopatric subspecies that are thought to have arisen from several historic colonization events within the archipelago. We have isolated and optimized seven microsatellite loci from Brachyderes rugatus calvus from Gran Canaria. Six of these loci are polymorphic within B. rugatus (11-22 alleles per locus; heterozygosity between 0.43 and 0.84). There is no evidence for heterozygote deficit within populations or for linkage disequilibrium between pairs of loci. These molecular markers are likely to prove useful tools for quantifying the genetic variability of bottlenecked island populations.

Characterization of Microsatellite Loci inSmicronyx sordidus, the Gray Sunflower Seed Weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

“…Little is known about the population structure of this species. Microsatellites, although widely used for study of populations of other important weevil pests (Dhuyvetter et al, 2002;Ernst et al, 2005;Forgie et al, 2006;Kim and Sappington, 2004;Liewlaksaneeyanawin et al, 2001), have not been reported for this species or any congeners prior to our study (Li et al, 2008). We herein report five primer pairs for microsatellites discovered in GSSW collected from four locations (IA, MT, NM, OR).…”

“…Microsatellite loci were isolated using a biotin-enrichment protocol based on Forgie et al (2006) and Schemerhorn et al (2003). Whole genomic DNA was extracted from 20 gray sunflower seed weevil specimens using Qiagen's DNeasy Tissue Extraction Kit and was digested with Sau3AI restriction enzyme and ligated to the Sau3AI-specific adaptor by annealing together oligo A and oligo B (Louie and Bardeleben, 2006;Refseth et al, 1997).…”