Isolation and characterisation of microsatellite loci for the ancient cephalopod, Nautilus pompilius

A microsatellite-enriched genomic library was created from a single Nautilus pompilius individual and clones/fragments sequenced using Sanger and Illumina MiSeq sequencing. Forty-four markers were tested in four individuals and 30 markers selected for further testing in a population of unrelated individuals from Imperieuse Reef, west Australia. Observed levels of heterozygosity in the IR population ranged from 0.17–1.00 with a mean of 17.2 alleles per locus. No groups of loci displayed evidence of significant linkage disequilibrium. Twenty-one markers were in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium and will be used to study population structure in this species.