Journal of Heredity Advance Access originally published online on November 17, 2006
Journal of Heredity 2006 97(6):599-602; doi:10.1093/jhered/esl035
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Brief Communications |
First Evidence of Higher Female Recombination in a Species with Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination: the Saltwater Crocodile
From the Centre for Advanced Technologies in Animal Genetics and Reproduction, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Address correspondence to C. Moran at the address above, or e-mail: chrism{at}vetsci.usyd.edu.au.
The first evidence of genetic linkage and sex-specific recombination in the order Crocodylia is reported. This study was conducted using a resource pedigree of saltwater crocodiles consisting of 16 known-breeding pairs (32 adults) and 101 juveniles. A total of 21 microsatellite loci were available for analysis. Ten of the 21 loci showed linkage with 4 linkage groups: 3 pairwise (Cj131/Cj127, CUD68/Cj101, and Cj107/Cp10) and 1 four-locus (Cj122, CUD78, Cj16, and Cj104) being found. Linkage analysis on the 21 loci revealed evidence of sex-specific differences in recombination rates. All 5 nonzero interlocus intervals were longer in females than in males, with the 4-loci linkage group 3-fold longer in females than in males (41.63 cM and 14.1 cM, respectively). This is the first report of sex-specific recombination rates in a species that exhibits temperature-dependent sex determination.