Development of microsatellites for Southern Darwin’s frog Rhinoderma darwinii (Duméril & Bibron, 1841)

The Southern Darwin’s frog Rhinoderma darwinii is a charismatic, mouth-brooding amphibian endemic to temperate forests of South America with a Vulnerable conservation status according to the IUCN Red List. We developed microsatellite markers from next generation sequence data that will aid genetic monitoring during and after re-introduction efforts. Using bioinformatics we characterized 3,521 perfect microsatellite repeats and designed primers for 35 of them. From these, 23 were polymorphic and amplified reliably. Number of alleles varied between 2 and 15, allele sizes varied between 84 and 299 bp, and observed heterozygosities varied between 0.105 and 0.904. These microsatellites represent a valuable resource to aid recovery of threatened Southern Darwin’s frog populations.