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The oriental river prawn (Macrobrachium nipponense) is an important freshwater prawn species in China. We collected 236 oriental river prawns from four wild stocks from Qiandao Lake, Zhejiang, China, and used nine polymorphic microsatellite markers to investigate their genetic diversity and structure, to facilitate the development of a selective breeding program. We found 185 alleles at nine loci in this sample. The observed heterozygosity (H(O)) and expected heterozygosity (H(E)) ranged from 0.43 to 0.89 and 0.56 to 0.95, respectively. The four stocks of M. nipponense displayed high genetic diversity (14.33-15.89 alleles/locus, H(O) = 0.66-0.77 and H(E) = 0.78-0.88). Genetic diversity of the stock from Weiping town was lower than the stocks from the other locations. Mutation-drift equilibrium analysis showed no significant bottleneck effect. F-statistics among stocks ranged from 0.03 to 0.07, indicating a moderate level of differentiation. Based on genetic structure analysis, the 236 individuals from the four wild stocks could be divided into two potential populations. Overall, the 09CA, 09AY and 09JJ wild stocks had higher allelic and genetic diversity than the upstream 09WP stock. These three wild stocks could be used as founders for selective breeding.

Oriental river prawn, Macrobrachium nipponense, is a commercially important freshwater prawn species in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Due to overfishing for food, the wild stocks M. nipponense are endangered. Twenty microsatellite loci were isolated from the M. nipponense. Twelve of these loci were polymorphic (seven to 16 alleles per locus), with expected heterozygosity ranging from 0.68 to 0.86 ( n = 48). These polymorphic loci provide a valuable tool for assessing genetic diversity of wild and cultured populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]