Isolation and characterization of microsatellite markers from the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus

Abstract

The budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus, belongs to a group of birds that are among the most common captive‐held avian species that are also most threatened. Budgies are also a valuable resource as model species for many important vertebrate characteristics including auditory and ageing. Several microsatellite‐enriched genomic libraries were developed using standard protocols. Twelve of 20 primer pairs developed from microsatellite‐containing sequences were codominant and polymorphic when tested on 21 birds from three different states. The number of alleles detected ranged from two to four, with the expected and observed heterozygosities ranging from 0.09 to 0.61 and from 0.00 to 0.85, respectively. The genomic libraries and the primers described here will be useful in characterizing budgies.

A Review of Microsatellite Markers and their Application on Genetic Diversity Studies in Parrots

“…The study showed that the groups are not entirely composed of relatives and it seems that the composition of the groups occurred due to the lack of females throughout the years [15]. For another Australian parrot, the Budgerigar parakeet (Melopsittacus undulatus), 20 microsatellite loci were developed [16]. Although this parrot is not a threatened species, it is widely used in captivity and, therefore, is commonly removed from nature.…”

The physiological and genetic differences between flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis vs. Ficedula hypoleuca)

“…In practice, various BAC clones are used for understanding and mapping genomes in various mammals (primates, cats, dogs, cows, pigs) (Kellner et al, 2005;Thomas et al, 2002). A certain number of molecular markers and genomic databases have been created for the duck and goose (Huang et al, 2006;Maak et al, 2003), dove (Traxler et al, 2000), budgerigar (Kamara et al, 2007), pheasant (Baratti et al, 2001), peacock (Hale et al, 2004, Hanotte et al, 1991, Japanese quail (Kayang et al, 2002;Pang et al, 1999), ostrich (Tang et al, 2003), emu (Taylor et al, 1999) and a limited number of other bird species. These tools should facilitate the construction of recombination genetic maps that have been recently successfully realized for such object as a duck (Huang et al, 2005).…”