Microsatellites and Their Application to Conservation Genetics

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Microsatellites, or simple sequences, consist of tandemly repeated units, each between 1 and 10 bp (base pairs) in length, such as (TG)n or (AAT)n (Litt and Luty, 1989; Tautz, 1989; Weber and May, 1989). They are widely dispersed throughout eukaryotic genomes (e.g., Gyapay et al., 1994), and are often highly polymorphic owing to variation in the number of repeat units (e.g., Amos et al., 1993). Although the application of microsatellite markers to population genetic studies is quite recent, with a relatively small number of plant and animal studies published (still fewer of these studies have been carried out from a conservation genetics perspective), this will certainly change completely within the next few years. This is because the potential for the use of these markers in small populations, and especially in endangered species, is very great, primarily since material for microsatellite analysis can potentially be sampled noninvasively from free-living populations (e.g., Morin et al., 1994a). This fact, together with the high information content of the genetic data yielded by microsatellite loci, will serve to make these markers one of the tools of choice for many future conservation genetic studies.</jats:p>