Average coefficients of membership across the 71 replicates for the optimal ΔK were computed using the CLUMPP program ( Jakobsson & Rosenberg 2007). DISTRUCT software ( Rosenberg 2004) was used to graphically display the membership coefficient of an individual to separate

clusters. Three eelgrass populations – Puck Bay (PB), Cudema Bay (CB) and Greifswalder Bodden (GB) – were characterised genetically. Their locations are shown on the map (Figure 1) together with those Selleck 3-MA of some Baltic and North Sea populations studied by other authors (Olsen et al., 2004 and Diekmann and Serrao, 2012). Two multiplexes, 6 microsatellites each (Table 1), were developed to estimate clonal diversity and genetic polymorphism within the target populations. The amplification selleck kinase inhibitor effectiveness of all loci was very high (99.09–100%). The PI value of the marker set we used was 3.9 × 10− 8, indicating a high power of identification of unique genotypes. Genetic profiles for 23, 24 and 23 eelgrass shoots from the PB, CB and GB populations respectively were obtained. We distinguished 20 multilocus genotypes in the PB population and eight in the one from GB ( Table 2). The CB population consists

of individuals with a different genotype. Thus, clonal diversity in the three populations was 0.86 (PB), 0.32 (GB) and 1.00 (CB). There was no significant LD for any pair of loci. Similarly, no evidence of significant scoring errors resulting from stuttering, large allele dropout or null alleles presence was recorded. All microsatellite loci were therefore included in further analyses. Altogether, 86 alleles were scored (Table 1), on average 7.17 per locus, ranging from 4 alleles at locus CT19 to 15 at CT17. All three populations shared only 18 of them. Out of 47 private alleles 23, 20 and 4 belonged to the PB, CB and GB populations respectively. The genetic polymorphism indices of the three populations Liothyronine Sodium are shown in Table 2. The average observed heterozygosity

(HO) of the three populations was 0.46 (SE = 0.08). The mean expected heterozygosity in the PB, CB and GB collections was 0.45 (SE = 0.04). All three populations showed relatively low allelic richness values (mean R = 3.17), but the GB population appeared to be much less polymorphic than the other two. This was especially evident when the values of expected heterozygosity (HE) and allelic richness (R) were compared. The GB population also had the lowest number of private alleles ( Table 2). Generally, the genetic diversities of the PB and CB populations were similar to one another but different from that of GB. All the populations showed statistically significant deviations from HWE equilibrium with either significant positive (PB and CB) or negative (GB) FIS values ( Table 2). We had checked whether the negative FIS value was due to a genetic bottleneck in the history of this population but we found no evidence for it.