Abstract Microsatellites are valuable molecular markers for evolutionary and ecological studies. Next generation sequencing is responsible for the increasing number of microsatellites for non-model species. Penguins of the Pygoscelis genus are comprised of three species: Adélie (P. adeliae), Chinstrap (P. antarcticus) and Gentoo penguin (P. papua), all distributed around Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic. The species have been affected differently by climate change, and the use of microsatellite markers will be crucial to monitor population dynamics. We characterized a large set of genome-wide microsatellites and evaluated polymorphisms in all three species. SOLiD reads were generated from the libraries of each species, identifying a large amount of microsatellite loci: 33,677, 35,265 and 42,057 for P. adeliae, P. antarcticus and P. papua, respectively. A large number of dinucleotide (66,139), trinucleotide (29,490) and tetranucleotide (11,849) microsatellites are described. Microsatellite abundance, diversity and orthology were characterized in penguin genomes. We evaluated polymorphisms in 170 tetranucleotide loci, obtaining 34 polymorphic loci in at least one species and 15 polymorphic loci in all three species, which allow to perform comparative studies. Polymorphic markers presented here enable a number of ecological, population, individual identification, parentage and evolutionary studies of Pygoscelis, with potential use in other penguin species.

Little is known about the evolutionary relationships among Linum species, basically because of the lack of transferable molecular markers. Currently, expressed sequence tags available in public databases provide an opportunity for the rapid and inexpensive development of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers in wild flax species. In this regard, fifty expressed sequence tag-derived microsatellite markers (EST-SSRs) were evaluated for polymorphism and transferability in 50 Linum usitatissimum cultivars/accessions and 11 Linum species. Among them 23 EST-SSRs were polymorphic in L. usitatissimum, while 2-4 alleles were detected (average 2.26 per locus). The polymorphism information content value ranged from 0.08 to 0.55 (average 0.38). Forty one genic markers (95.3%) produced strong amplicons in at least two of the 11 Linum species. The percentage of cross amplification ranged from 34.1% to 92.7% in L. tauricum and L. bienne, respectively. Moreover, the rate of transferability was associated positively with the botanical section. Our results suggest that the high degree of EST-SSRs transferability to Linum species can be a useful enhancement of the current database of SSR markers for future genetic and evolutionary studies.