RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Octopus hubbsorum Berry, 1953 is the most important species for commercial fishing in the Mexican Pacific. However, there is a lack of information regarding population structure that could have important management implications. We tested 44 microsatellite loci in O. hubbsorum by cross-amplification from O. bimaculatus. METHODS AND RESULTS: Genetic diversity and structure was tested over 30 octopus sampled from Santa Cruz de Miramar (Nayarit, México). A total of 11 loci were successfully amplified. All loci were polymorphic with the number of effective alleles ranging from 2.13 to 23.14, while three loci significantly deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. No significant LD was observed between pairs of loci (P ≥ 0.05). The application of the new markers in a O. hubbsorum population from Santa Cruz de Miramar Nayarit, México, did not showed Wahlund or isolate breaking effects due to the mixing of distinct populations. CONCLUSIONS: The loci were useful to estimate levels of pairwise relatedness and to discard the presence of recent demographic bottlenecks in the population. We consider that eight microsatellites are adequate from the 11 amplified loci.
