Using Nuclear Microsatellite Loci to Characterize Genetic Variation within and among Populations of the Federally Endangered Astragalus bibullatus

Abstract

Astragalus bibullatus is a federally endangered plant endemic to the cedar glades of Middle Tennessee. To aid in conservation efforts, genetic data have been generated using microsatellite markers. These markers were developed in a previous study, Morris et al. (2016), in which seven loci were genotyped for 361 individuals across nine populations. This provided the mean number of alleles, mean number of effective alleles, observed heterozygosity, and unbiased expected heterozygosity across all nine populations. In the present study, one additional locus, Abib152, was used to genotype the same individuals as the previous study, evaluated using the same metrics, and combined with the data from Morris et al. (2016) to determine how the new locus impacted the overall results. Adding Abib152 resulted in lower values for all calculated metrics, which was unexpected.