The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica Gmelin 1791) has great ecological and economic importance but populations have declined, especially in Chesapeake Bay, to historically low numbers. Hatcheries strive to produce oysters with beneficial characteristics for supplementation and commercial purposes, both natural and stimulated mass spawning. Unequal contribution of parents in mass spawnings potentially can lead to high levels of inbreeding and a loss of beneficial characteristics in offspring. In this study, we determined microsatellite genotypes for parents (n^parents =24, 49, and 77 parents) and progeny (n=96 each) of three hatchery-produced families and used the data for parental assignment. We observed the presence of more than two alleles per locus for some offspring, yet because genetic analysis software only allows for a maximum of two alleles per locus, we chose the two alleles with the strongest signals. For the three parent “populations,” 71% of alleles had frequencies of <0.05 and observed heterozygosities were lower than expected by an average factor of 0.27. Inbreeding within the various parent populations was similar across the three families ranging from F^IS 0.26–0.43. In all three families, the offspring exhibited greater levels of genetic diversity and lower inbreeding levels than the parents (F^IS 0.14–0.21), and in some cases offspring exhibited alleles that were not present in the parents. Variance in the number of offspring produced per parent was observed for all families and in general, <10% of potential parents (generally 2-5 females and 1-3 males) produced >10% of the offspring. Reproductive success for spawning parents, N^b, determined by three methods, ranged from 0.07 to 0.27. As the number of parents per family increased, a higher proportion of parents failed to produce offspring. Across all three families, the average effective number of breeders was N^b = 7.1 and the level of reproductive success was inversely proportional to the number of potential parents. This finding implies that to maintain high levels of diversity and beneficial characteristics in the offspring (and to avoid the chance of unintentional inbreeding), hatcheries should perform more spawnings with fewer parents.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-4504 |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
| Creators | Piggott, April |
| Publisher | VCU Scholars Compass |
| Source Sets | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | © The Author |
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