Characterization of 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci in the Japanese bush warbler Cettia diphone

Japanese bush warblers, Cettia diphone , are a common species in Japan and have a poly-gynous breeding system. In the breeding ground some males have their own territories withmore than one female. Male floaters are also not uncommon in the breeding ground. Tounderstand breeding strategy in this species, exact parentage should be elucidated. In orderto obtain a tool for this purpose, we isolated 34 microsatellite loci from a genomic libraryin this species and developed primers for 12 loci. These primers were tested in the Japanesebush warbler and successfully amplified. In analyses of 49 unrelated individuals, allelicnumbers ranged from two to 22, and observed heterozygosity ( H O ) ranged from 0.27 to 0.854except for two loci (Cdi29 and Cdi35a) with H O < 0.1. Keywords : Cettia diphone , Japanese bush warblers, microsatellite, primer Received 8 August 2002; revision received 28 September 2002; accepted 28 September 2002 Japanese bush warblers ( Cettia diphone ) are distributedalong the eastern rim of the Eurasian continent and theJapanese islands and are one of the best known species inJapan because of their unmistakable songs (Hamao 1997).They are residents or short-distant migrants on Honshu(main) island in Japan. In early spring, males begin to singin wintering sites, such as bushes, parks, and backyardsof lowland areas and most of them migrate to highermountainsides and breed in bamboo bushes or grassmeadows. At the field site in Chichibu, Honshu island, weobserved their behaviour and collected blood samples forhormone measurement after capture with mist nets. Wefound that males sing from late March through August inthe breeding area and circulating testosterone is foundhigh during this period (Wada