Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Are Suitable For Assessing The Success of Restocking Efforts of The European Lobster (Homarus Gammarus, L.)

The European lobster (Homarus gammarus) forms the base of an important fishery along the coasts of Europe. However, stocks have been in decline for many years, prompting new regulations in the fishery and also restocking efforts. An important feature of any restocking effort is the assessment of success in the number of released juveniles that stay and become adult over time. Here, we tested the power of a SNP DNA marker panel developed for population assignment to correctly infer parentage on the maternal side of lobster larvae, in the absence of known fathers, using lobsters included in a current restocking effort on the Swedish west coast. We also examined the power to reconstruct the unknown paternal genotypes, and examined the number of fathers for each larval clutch. We found that the 96-SNP panel, despite only containing 78 informative markers, allowed us to assign all larvae to the correct mother. Furthermore, with 10 genotyped larvae or more, confident paternal genotypes could be reconstructed. We also found that 15 out of 17 clutches were full siblings, whereas two clutches had two fathers. To our knowledge, this is the first time a SNP panel of this size has been used to assess parentage in a crustacean restocking effort. Our conclusion is that the panel works well, and that it could be an important tool for the assessment of restocking success of H. gammarus in the future.

Dominican Republic: The response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020

The paper presents the situation in the Dominican Republic in terms of pandemic preparedness, the policies implemented to respond to it, the achievements made, and the challenges for the future. The COVID-19 pandemic found the Dominican Republic unprepared to deal with it, with significant deficiencies in the areas of prevention, early detection and notification, rapid response and mitigation, compliance with international standards, risk environment and health system strength. The country had the most infections in the entire Caribbean region and one of the most important in Latin America, however, the policies implemented were appropriate and the country faced lower rates of both serious illness and mortality, compared to the rest of the region. The health system, so far, has been able to respond, without exceeding the installed capacity in terms of beds and intensive care units. The worst part of the response preparedness is the weakness of the first level of care and its underfinancing, concluding on the necessity of investing adequately in strengthening the first level of care, implementing the population assignment using geographical criteria, developing payment for results mechanisms to increase quality and efficiency and putting in place the unified electronic medical record, in order to make it feasible to establish a prevention strategy.

Conservation and Management of Salmon in the Age of Genomics

Salmon were among the first nonmodel species for which systematic population genetic studies of natural populations were conducted, often to support management and conservation. The genomics revolution has improved our understanding of the evolutionary ecology of salmon in two major ways: ( a) Large increases in the numbers of genetic markers (from dozens to 104–106) provide greater power for traditional analyses, such as the delineation of population structure, hybridization, and population assignment, and ( b) qualitatively new insights that were not possible with traditional genetic methods can be achieved by leveraging detailed information about the structure and function of the genome. Studies of the first type have been more common to date, largely because it has taken time for the necessary tools to be developed to fully understand the complex salmon genome. We expect that the next decade will witness many new studies that take full advantage of salmonid genomic resources.

Saffron (Crocus sativus) is an autotriploid that evolved in Attica (Greece) from wild Crocus cartwrightianus

Crocus sativus is the source of saffron, which is made from dried stigmas of the plant. It is a male-sterile triploid that ever since its origin has been propagated vegetatively. The mode of evolution and area of origin of saffron are matters of long-lasting debates. Here we analyzed chloroplast genomes, genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) data, nuclear single-copy genes, and genome sizes to solve these controversial issues. We could place 99.3% of saffron GBS alleles in Crocus cartwrightianus, a species occurring in southern mainland Greece and on Aegean islands, identifying it as the sole progenitor of saffron. Phylogenetic and population assignment analyses together with chloroplast polymorphisms indicated the wild C. cartwrightianus population south of Athens as most similar to C. sativus. We conclude that the crop is an autotriploid that evolved in Attica by combining two different genotypes of C. cartwrightianus. Vegetative propagation prevented afterwards segregation of the favorable traits of saffron.