Enzyme analysis of long spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii) on the south eastern seaboard of Australia

Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned ; Statement: Samples of gonad (free of other tissue) were excised from live animals, snap frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80° C. Samples were screened initially for 18 enzyme systems. Five (ADH, AK, GPDH, LDH and 6PGDH) were eliminated from further investigation due to failure to produce detectable banding. Of the remaining 13, seven (AAT, APK, IDH, MDH, MPI, PGM and PGI) provided clearly interpretable and consistently repeatable patterns. Of these, three (APK, IDH, MDH) were monomorphic. The remaining four enzyme systems (AAT, MPI, PGM and PGI) were selected for use in the primary study. MPI, PGM and PGI were all run in the tris-glycene buffer (pH 8.5) and provided one polymorphic locus each. Electrophoretic runs using a tris-glyine buffer were carried out at room temperature over 30 minutes, while those using tris-citrate were run at 4°C for 65 minutes. Protocols for cellulose acetate electrophoresis were after Richardson et al (1986). ; Credit Funding: FRDC project 2001/044 ; Purpose To determine whether newly established populations of the long spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii) in Tasmania displayed lower levels of genetic variation relative to populations from mainland Australia, as might be expected if Tasmanian populations arose from a single or small number of founder events with little subsequent gene flow from other populations. ; Sixty animals were collected from each of Bass Pt, New South Wales (lat 34°35' S, long 150°54' E; August 2000); south side of East Cove, Deal Is, Bass St. (lat 39°28.4' S, long 147°18.4' E; June 2000) and Fortescue Bay, Tasmania (lat 43°8.5' S, long 148°0.0' E; October 2000 and April 2001). To examine the genetic relationship between the three site populations of Centrostephanus rodgersii, allelic diversity and heterozygosity among the three sites was compared using BIOSYS.