Isolation and characterization of microsatellite markers in musk duck (Biziura lobata: Aves), and their application to other waterfowl species

We isolated and characterized 11 novel microsatellite loci to study paternity in the Australian musk duck (Biziura lobata), using nonradioactive PCR-based techniques to screen GA and GAAA repeats enriched genomic DNA libraries. Nine of 11 loci showed no evidence of null alleles and were variable (mean H E = 0.825, mean number of alleles = 9). This set of nine loci is suitable for paternity assignment (exclusion probability for nine unlinked loci = 0.9999). We also demonstrated that many of these loci cross-amplify in various other waterfowl species. © 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.