TECHNICAL NOTE Microsatellite markers for the wood decay fungus Phlebiopsis gigantea Ai-Zhong Liu ® Nicklas Samils ® Brian Higgins ® Jan Stenlid ® Bernard Slippers ® C. Joseph Nairn ® Sarah F. Covert Received: 21 November 2008 / Accepted: 16 December 2008 / Published online: 9 January 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Nine polymorphic microsatellite markers were developed for the wood-decay basidiomycete Phlebiopsis gigantea, which is used commercially as a biocontrol agent for annosum root disease on conifers. Microsatellite sequences were isolated from repeat-enriched genomic libraries. Primers flanking these sequences were screened on P. gigantea isolates from Europe and North America. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 5 to 15, and gene diversity ranged from 0.72 to 0.90. These markers should be useful for studies of P. gigantea natural popu- lation structure and for making predictions about the impact of P. gigantea application in conifer forests. Keywords Phlebiopsis gigantea Á Rotstop Á Simple sequence repeat Á Microsatellites Á Biological control Á Biocontrol Phlebiopsis gigantea is a saprophytic basidiomycete that readily colonizes coniferous wood. It is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, and also is present in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand (Grillo et al. 2005). P. gigantea is used in Europe as a biocontrol agent for annosum root disease because its application to freshly cut conifer stumps limits Heterobasidion annosum coloniza- tion of stumps and their associated roots (Pratt et al. 2000). On-going research in Canada and the United States (US) is targeted towards adapting this disease control method for use in North America. Previous studies of P. gigantea genetic diversity in Europe and North America relied heavily upon random amplified polymorphic DNA or random amplified micro- satellite markers (Roy et al. 1997; Vainio et al. 1998, 2001; Vainio and Hantula 2000; Grillo et al. 2005). The accuracy of these methods is reduced by the fact that they are not species-specific, locus-specific, codominant marker sys- tems (Lynch and Milligan 1994). We sought, therefore, to develop microsatellite markers for P. gigantea so that we could conduct detailed studies of diversity and population genetic structure in this species. Phlebiopsis gigantea isolates were collected in the southeastern US by trapping of air-borne spores on an agar medium that is semi-selective for basidiomycetes (Behrendt and Blanchette 2001). Their identity was con- firmed by DNA sequencing of their ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (data not shown). Additional North American P. gigantea isolates were provided by A.-Z. Liu Á B. Higgins Á C. J. Nairn Á S. F. Covert (&) Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2152, USA e-mail: covert@uga.edu N. Samils Á J. Stenlid Á B. Slippers Department of Forest Mycology and Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden B. Slippers Department of Genetics, Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Present Address: A.-Z. Liu Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS, Kunming, China Present Address: B. Higgins Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA 123 Conserv Genet (2009) 10:1529–1532 DOI 10.1007/s10592-008-9785-9