Microsatellite data from various African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) populations throughout Africa

1280 African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) samples genotyped with up to 19 microsatellites. 1275 samples are from East (12 populations) and southern Africa (4 populations). 5 samples are from central Africa (2 populations). Dataset consists of previously published genotypes from four different laboratories, using microsatellites originally developed for cattle (Bos taurus) and randomly chosen with respect to genomic location (microsatellite sets A, B, C and E). For various populations, microsatellite sets from two different laboratories were available, which permitted allele alignment by matching (allele size shift) each microsatellite's allele frequencies while preserving size order. Aligning microsatellite alleles from different laboratories based on frequency information is a valid standardization method when data sets are reasonably large and coming from the same population. Both the original microsatellite allele sizes and the aligned (standardized) microsatellite allele sizes are provided. Missing values are denoted with 0.