Parentage assignment and parental contribution analysis in large yellow croaker Larimichthys crocea using microsatellite markers

The large yellow croaker Larimichthys crocea is one of the most important fish species in China. To estimate the reproductive success of breeders, three independent full-factorial crosses were created and the fins of breeders and progenies were sampled for microsatellite analysis. Out of 959 offspring from three sets, 99.6% were assigned to their parents using 6–7 microsatellite markers. In all crosses, some parent pairs produced a large number of offspring and some parent pairs did not produce any offspring. The contributions of male or female parents were unequal, ranging from 1.0–89.3% across the three sets. The loss of putative Ne was 69.6% in set 1, 31.2% in set 2 and 57.6% in set 3. These results suggest that the unequal contribution of parents is universal in artificial breeding of L. crocea, especially in a small population, and this should be taken into account in hatcheries or when releasing animals for resource enhancement [Current Zoology 58 (2): 244–249, 2012].