Multiple paternity in the freshwater pearl mussel Hyriopsis cumingii (Lea, 1852)

摘要

Hyriopsis cumingii (Lea, 1852) is a freshwater mussel of major commercial importance for pearl culture in China. In this study, five polymorphic microsatellites from H. cumingii were identified and employed to investigate the occurrence and frequency of multiple paternity in 15 H. cumingii broods caught from Poyang Lake, China. The allele number of each locus ranged from 12 to 25, with a mean of 16.8 ± 5.4 alleles per locus. Multiple paternity was discovered in 10 broods by genotyping the dam mussel and the offspring from each brood. The sire number inferred by COLONY software in the 10 broods ranged from 2 to 4 with a mean of 2.7 ± 0.26 sires per brood. In 6 of the 10 broods, sires contributed skewed numbers of offspring (P 0.05). These factors may be important for avoidance of inbreeding, optimization of genetic variation in offspring and for the persistence and evolution of H. cumingii.