Genetic diversity of caspian roach (Rutilus rutilus caspicus) in gharesou and gomishan regions using microsatellite

Caspian roach (Rutilus rutilus caspius) is regarded as one of the important commercial species in Caspian Sea, despite the decrease in roach stock in recent years as well as the high importance of this fish, information at the molecular level is scare. In this study, the genetic diversity of Rutilus rutilus caspius from Gharesou and Gomishan regions was investigated by 10 polymorphic microsatellite loci. According to the results, the Fst value was 0.016 which indicates the low genetic differentiation between the populations. Most of the loci showed deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium which can attribute it to the presence of null alleles and artificial reproduction. The number of alleles, observed and expected heterozygosity were, 4-21, 0.29-1(the average: 0.7) and 0.72-0.93 (the average: 0.84), respectively. This indicates the allelic diversity and genetic variation of investigated populations is at favorable level. Also, analysis of molecular variance showed there is low genetic variation among populations and most of the observed variation is within the populations. Results based on genetic distance indicated that roach populations are separate from each other in the investigated regions.