A new STR panel for parentage analysis in endangered tortoises

Habitat alteration and loss are the main threats to the conservation of tortoises (Testudo spp.), but also pet trade plays an important role in their reduction. In the European Union, the capture from nature is banned for several species, and only bred animals can be possessed and sold after their legal birth in captivity has been confirmed. Parentage analysis through molecular markers has a great applicability in wildlife conservation since allows verifying whether newborns are offspring of known captive-bred individuals and thus not illegally taken from the wild. In this paper, we developed a panel of 16 de novo sequenced microsatellites (STRs) for conservation genetics of T. graeca and we tested its effectiveness also for parentage analysis in two other species of endangered tortoises, T. hermanni and T. marginata. The reported data demonstrated the suitability and reliability of the protocol in T. graeca and T. hermanni, but not in T. marginata. For this last species, an integration with previously isolated or de novo developed markers is needed for applications in conservation genetics.