Characterization and application of newly developed polymorphic microsatellite markers in the Ezo red fox (Vulpes vulpes schrencki) T. Tada1, Y. Seki2, Y. Kameyama1, Y. Kikkawa2 and K. Wada1,2 1Graduate School of Bioindustry, Tokyo University of Agriculture, Abashiri, Hokkaido, Japan 2Mammalian Genetics Project, Department of Genome Medicine, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, Japan Corresponding author: K. Wada E-mail:
[email protected] Genet. Mol. Res. 15 (4): gmr15049104 Received August 30, 2016 Accepted October 24, 2016 Published December 19, 2016 DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.4238/gmr15049104 Copyright © 2016 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 License. ABSTRACT. The Ezo red fox (Vulpes vulpes schrencki), a subspecies endemic to Hokkaido island, Japan, is a known host species for the tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis. To develop tools for molecular ecological studies, we isolated 28 microsatellite regions from the genome of Ezo red fox, and developed 18 polymorphic microsatellite markers. These markers were characterized using 7 individuals and 22 fecal samples of the Ezo red fox. The number of alleles for these markers ranged from 1 to 7, and the observed heterozygosity, estimated on the basis of the genotypes of 7 individuals, ranged from 0.29 to 1.00. All markers, except DvNok5, were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P > 0.05), and no linkage disequilibrium was detected among these loci, except between DvNok14 and DvNok28 (P = 0.01). Moreover, six microsatellite loci were successfully genotyped using feces-derived Genetics and Molecular Research 15 (4): gmr15049104 T.