Abstract
Over the last 20 years, microsatellites have revolutionized the study of cooperation in the social insects. The Polistes paper wasps have been an important model system for investigations of cooperative behavior. Recently, an expressed sequence tag (EST) library has been developed for P. metricus, allowing researchers to investigate the genetic basis of cooperative behavior in primitive social insect societies for the first time. We searched these freely available EST sequences for microsatellite motifs. This represents a relatively new approach to the development of microsatellite loci that allows for the development of a greater number of loci at less expense. We designed 32 PCR primer pairs, of which 23 amplified PCR products and 18 were polymorphic. These loci exhibited high levels of polymorphism, comparable to anonymous loci isolated via screens of partial genomic libraries. Thus, they are appropriate for population genetic studies as well as the reconstruction of colony genetic structure. A screen of the entire EST database found a total of 708 di-, tri-, tetra- and penta-nucleotide repeats with large repeat units typical of polymorphic loci and at least 30 bp of flanking sequence for primer design. This pool of potential loci represents a new genetic tool for P. metricus, as well as Polistes more generally, as there is great promise for cross amplification in other species.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank The Hudson lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for early access to assembled contig sequences and the Statistical Consulting Center at Grand Valley State University for statistical advice. This work was supported by grant #IOS-0803317 from the National Science Foundation as well as grants from the Center for Scholarly and Creative Activity at Grand Valley State University.
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Henshaw, M.T., Toth, A.L. & Young, T.J. Development of new microsatellite loci for the genus Polistes from publicly available expressed sequence tag sequences. Insect. Soc. 58, 581–585 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-011-0164-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-011-0164-z