Development of microsatellite markers in the rice paddy snake Enhydris plumbea (Colubridae)

Abstract

The rice paddy snake (also known as Boie’s mud snake) Enhydris plumbea is a viviparous colubrid snake. This is a widely distributed species found from the Andaman Islands (India) and Myanmar eastwards across the Southeast Asian Peninsula and southern China southwards into Indonesia; and it is present on most of the Indonesian islands and eastwards to Sulawesi and the Moluccas. The snake has been overexploited by local people for traditional medicine to treat skin diseases, and is listed on the “Lists of terrestrial wildlife under state protection, which are beneficial or of important economic or scientific value” promulgated by China’s State Forestry Administration in 2000. Knowledge of population structure and genetic diversity is crucial for effective wildlife preservation. Specific molecular markers such as mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites are useful tools for achieving this goal. Here, eight polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated from an enriched genomic library of E. plumbea. One hundred and twenty individuals were collected from Wenzhou population in Zhejiang, China. These markers revealed a high degree of genetic diversity (4–8 alleles per locus) and heterozygosity (H _O ranged from 0.148 to 0.789, and H _E ranged from 0.347 to 0.766). No locus exhibited significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. There was no evidence of linkage disequilibrium among pairs of loci. These loci will be useful for future study of population structure, genetic diversity and conservation strategy design of E. plumbea.