Peer Review #2 of "Cross-species screening of microsatellite markers for individual identification of snow petrel Pagodroma nivea and Wilson's storm petrel Oceanites oceanicus in Antarctica (v0.1)"

Seabirds are important indicators of marine ecosystem health. Species within the order Procellariiformes are the most abundant seabird species group distributed from warm tropical to cold temperate regions including Antarctica. There is a paucity of information on basic biology of the pelagic seabird species nesting on the Antarctic continents, and long-term studies are required to gather data on their population demography, genetics and other ecological parameters. Under the ‘Biology and Environmental Sciences’ component of the Indian Antarctic programme, long-term monitoring of Antarctic biodiversity is being conducted. In this paper, we describe results of cross-species screening of a panel of 12 and 10 microsatellite markers in two relatively little studied seabird species in Antarctica, the snow petrel Pagodroma nivea and the Wilson's storm petrel Oceanites oceanicus, respectively. These loci showed high amplification success and moderate levels of polymorphism in snow petrel (mean no. of alleles 7.08 ± 3.01 and mean observed heterozygosity 0.35 ± 0.23), but low polymorphism in Wilson's storm petrel (mean no. of alleles 3.9 ± 1.3 and mean observed heterozygosity 0.28 ± 0.18). The results demonstrate that these panels can unambiguously identify individuals of both species (cumulative PIDsibs for snow petrel is 3.7 × 10−03 and Wilson's storm petrel is 1.9 × 10−02) from field-collected samples. This work forms a baseline for undertaking long-term genetic research of these Antarctic seabird species and provides critical insights into their population genetics.

Download Full-text

Standardizing microsatellite panels for individual identification of seabirds’ Snow Petrel Pagodroma nivea and Wilson’s Storm Petrel Oceanites oceanicus in Antarctica

10.1101/221861 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Anant Pande ◽

Nidhi Rawat ◽

Kuppusamy Sivakumar ◽

Sambandan Sathyakumar ◽

Vinod B. Mathur ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Genetic Research ◽

Individual Identification ◽

Seabird Species ◽

Snow Petrel ◽

Antarctic Continent ◽

The Antarctic ◽

Past Population ◽

Storm Petrel ◽

Oceanites Oceanicus

ABSTRACTSeabirds are known to be important indicators of marine ecosystems health. Procellariiformes are one of the most abundant seabird species distributed from warm tropical to cold temperate regions including Antarctica. With few long-term studies on breeding seabirds at the Antarctic continent, crucial biological parameters such as genetic variation, population genetic structure and past population demography is lacking for most of the commonly occurring species. Under the ‘Biology and Environmental Sciences’ component of the Indian Antarctic programme, long-term monitoring of Antarctic biodiversity is being conducted. In this paper, we describe a panel of 12 and 10 cross-species microsatellite markers for two relatively less studied seabird species in Antarctica, snow petrel Pagodroma nivea and Wilson’s storm petrel Oceanites oceanicus, respectively. These loci showed high amplification success and moderate level of polymorphism in snow petrel (mean no. of alleles 7.08±3.01 and mean observed heterozygosity 0.35±0.23), but low polymorphism in Wilson’s storm petrel (mean no. of alleles 3.9±1.3 and mean observed heterozygosity 0.28±0.18). The results demonstrate that these panels can unambiguously identify individuals of both species from various types of biological materials. This work forms a baseline for undertaking long-term genetic research of Antarctic seabird species and provides critical insights into their population genetics.

Download Full-text