Genetic distinction of marten species by fixation of a microsatellite region

Abstract

The pine marten, Martes martes, and the beech marten, Ma. foina, are sympatric species that are often mistaken for one another and yet have different conservation and management priorities. Three microsatellites originally isolated from the Eurasian badger, Meles meles, were amplified and sequenced in Ma. martes and Ma. foina. One of the regions includes a dinucleotide repeat, which is long, imperfect, and variable in both Me. meles and Ma. martes but shorter, perfect, and fixed in size in Ma. foina. Probabilities of allele exclusion confirmed that products amplified from these microsatellites could be used as a simple species-specific marker to distinguish the 2 species of Martes.