Developing species specific microsatellite primers can be avoided by using existing markers which amplify across species. However, for passerines, such 'cross-species' markers are mostly lacking and few guidelines exist for selecting them from the wide range of existing markers. Here cross-species amplification tests of 40 microsatellite primers in 13 passerine species show an increase in probability of amplification and polymorphism with decreasing phylogenetic distance. Primers which successfully amplified in many species had a higher chance to be polymorphic. However, since the amplification success, across a broad range of species, of particular primersets remains difficult to predict it is crucial to identify such markers empirically. Here we describe such widely applicable bird (passerines) microsatellite markers.
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