“…The number of alleles for M. affinis over the five microsatellite loci ranged from 5 to 12, with varied in size from 120 to 434 bp (Table 2), which was similar to the number (2-13, 5-10, 3-12) reported by VallesJimenez et al (2005), Rezaee, Farahmand, and Nematollahi (2016), and Lima, Silva, Oliveira, Maggioni, and Coimbra (2010) for Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) respectively, the number (6-14) that reported by Xu, Primavera, Pena, Pettit, Belak, and Warren (2001) for black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon), (5-16) by Zhang, Kong, Wang, and Wang (2010) for P. chinensis, and (5-15) by Gao et al (2008) for Chinese shrimp Fenneropenaeus chinensis. The tests for genetic differentiation showed significant allele frequency differences in all of the stock and suggested a moderate degree of similarity among the Bahrakan and Lifeh-Boosif populations of white shrimp (M. affinis) from the Persian Gulf evaluated in the current study.…”