Study of genetic diversity of Garra rufa (Heckel, 1843) in Fars province using microsatellite markers

Garra rufa, belongs to the Cyprinidae family; this fish is one of the important ecological species. In this study, six microsatellite locations were used to investigate the levels of genetic variation of Garra rufa in the Fahlyan and Sarab Bahram rivers in Fars province. In this research 56 samples used (28 samples per each river). The mean number of allele’s level at the population was 11.41 which are more than the reported values for freshwater fishes. The expected and observed heterozygosity were 0.497 and 0.847, respectively. Almost all of loci showed deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. It seems that there is a low separation between two populations of this species in the studied areas due to high level of gene flow (Nm=17.212) between two regions and low Fst (0.02). According to these analyses, it seems that, Garra rufa has desirable genetic diversity in investigated regions.