Genetic background of Galician wreckfish Polyprion americanus broodstocks

Abstract

The wreckfish Polyprion americanus is a long-living pelagic fish with a demersal adult phase that shows an antitropical distribution. In the Eastern Atlantic, juvenile and adult wreckfish are found off from the Norwegian coast to Southern Africa including shallow portions of the Mid-Atlantic ridge and associated islands (Macaronesian Islands) and the Mediterranean Sea (Sedberry et al. 1999). This species is a promising candidate for aquaculture and consequently it has recently been brought to Galician hatcheries for domestication (Peleteiro and Rodríguez, 2012). It is well known that domestication and management of hatchery stocks require an adequate strategy for the initial broodstock foundation and its further reproductive management. Therefore the combination of genetic markers with classic domestication strategies seems to be a useful approach to skip both genetic drift and consanguineous adverse effects. New microsatellite markers have been isolated for ecumenical tasks in this species and applied them to assess the genetic status of the four wreckfish stocks being harvested in Galician hatcheries as compared to the genetic diversity present in its source population from the Eastern Atlantic. Additionally, we aimed to predict the success of different reproductive strategies upon the in silico simulation of F1 and F2 progenies from each stock.