TECHNICAL NOTE Isolation and characterization of 8 novel microsatellites for the black abalone, Haliotis cracherodii, a marine gastropod decimated by the withering disease Ricardo Beldade • Christy A. Bell • Peter T. Raimondi • Maya K. George • C. Melissa Miner • Giacomo Bernardi Received: 14 June 2012 / Accepted: 25 June 2012 / Published online: 31 July 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract The black abalone, Haliotis cracherodii, is an intertidal marine gastropod that used to be extremely abundant before overharvesting and an outbreak of with- ering syndrome lowered its numbers to, in some sites, few individuals. A set of eight microsatellite markers was developed and tested for polymorphism using 41 individ- uals from two populations. Loci were highly polymorphic with expected heterozygosities ranging from 0.86 to 0.96, a likely signature of past large population size. These markers will be useful in tracking the fate of such a vul- nerable species that is likely to experience a severe bot- tleneck in the next few generations. Keywords Haliotis cracherodii Á Black abalone Á Withering disease Á Bottleneck Á Microsatellites Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) are intertidal marine gastropods that occur from northern California, USA, to Baja California, Mexico (Neuman et al. 2010). Although they have been considered less desirable than most abalone species, they were heavily harvested, particularly in southern California and Mexico, with a peak in the 1970s, when 2 million pounds were harvested in California in 1973 alone (Karpov et al. 2000). In addition to unsustain- able harvesting, a bacterial infection, known as withering syndrome, broke out in the early 1980s (Altstatt et al. 1996). Withering syndrome (WS) is caused by a bacterial infection, ‘‘withers’’ the snail’s foot and eventually causes death. The spread of the disease now extends over almost the entire range of the species. If no action is taken, it is estimated that H. cracherodii will decline by at least 80 % over a period of three generations (from approximately 1975 to 2015), extending into the past and the future (Smith et al. 2003). Consequently, the species qualifies as Critically Endangered under criterion A4 of the IUCN red list (Smith et al. 2003) and in 2009 was listed as endan- gered under the USA Endangered Species Act. High levels of interpopulation genetic divergence across California suggest that larval dispersal is restricted (Gru- enthal and Burton 2008) despite the dispersal phase extending up to 15 days (Morse et al. 1979) and a range of ocean fronts that sweep recruitment pulses up to 200 km along the Californian coast (Woodson et al. 2012). Recruitment of new individuals is strongly and positively linked to local abundance of adults. Hence in areas with few adults due to losses from disease or harvest, recruit- ment is typically non-existent. Due to these life history traits, we are now in a situation where very few adult individuals born before the withering outbreak are present. Therefore, we expect individuals to show high levels of genetic diversity, as a reflection of their past history, yet the near future is likely to result in very severe bottlenecks, accompanied by a rapid decline in genetic diversity (Hamm and Burton 2000; Gruenthal and Burton 2008). With these unique predictions in mind, we decided to develop microsatellite markers for H. cracherodii, the black aba- lone and test the idea that there would be high levels of R. Beldade Á C. A. Bell Á P. T. Raimondi Á M. K. George Á C. M. Miner Á G. Bernardi (&) Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA e-mail: bernardi@biology.ucsc.edu R. Beldade e-mail: rbeldade@gmail.com R. Beldade Faculdade de Cie ˆncias, Centro de Oceanografia, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal 123 Conservation Genet Resour (2012) 4:1071–1073 DOI 10.1007/s12686-012-9709-3