Genetic structure of Caspian populations of stellate sturgeon, Acipenser stellatus (Pallas, 1771), using microsatellite markers

Information about genetic relationships between populations of the stellate sturgeon Acipenser stellatus is scarce,despite its being commercially the most important and ecologically the most unique species in the Caspian Sea. Weconducted a large-scale genetic analysis on diversity at the molecular level of stellate sturgeon populations at three sites(the estuaries of the Rivers Ural, Kura and Sefidrud) around the Caspian Sea, by tests on the genomic DNA with 15sets of microsatellite markers (LS-19, 34, 39, 54, 57, 62, 68, 69, Spl-105, 104, 163, 168, 170, 173, 113). Ten primer setswere used to analyze the genetic variation in adults of the three populations. The analyses revealed that the average ofalleles per locus was 12.1 and all the sampled regions contained private alleles. The observed and expectedheterozygosity averaged 0.674 and 0.860, respectively. The FST values ranged between 0.050 to 0.055, showing asignificant difference between the three sites (P 0.01). The genetic distance between populations was 0.530, thusindicating that the genetic difference among populations is pronounced. These results, combined with the highlysignificant RST of genotypic difference between pairs of collection sites, provide useful information on the geneticvariation and differentiation among the Caspian Sea populations of the stellate sturgeon.