Isolation and characterization of microsatellite loci for Menziesia goyozanensis, an endangered shrub species endemic to Mt. Goyo in northern Japan

Menziesia goyozanensis, a Japanese kind of fool's huckleberry, is a shrub species endemic only to Mt. Goyo in northern Japan. This species is listed as 'critically endangered' in the Red Data Book of wild plants in Japan, and only a single population has yet been discovered. We isolated and characterized 16 microsatellite loci for this species. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 25. The range of expected heterozygosities was 0.292-0.917. Five of the 16 microsatellites were not conformed to Hardy- Weinberg equilibrium, probably due to the restricted population size, genetic drifting and the presence of null alleles. These 16 microsatellite loci gave a combined nonexclusion probability of<1.65E-15 in the sampled population. In Menziesia pentandra, which is closely related species to M. goyozanensis, the number of alleles detected and the expected heterozygosities of twelve loci ranged from 3 to 19 and 0.536 to 0.966, respectively. These informative microsatellite markers will be useful in studies of population genetic structure for these species.