Genetic Diversity Of Black Muntjac (Muntiacus Crinifrons) From Zhejiang Jiulongshan Natural Reserve Based On Microsatellite

Black muntjac(Muntiacus crinifrons),belongs to Cervidae,which is a typical semitropical forest speices and endemic to China.For strengthening the protction,black muntjac is placed on Category I of the List of Chinese State Key Protected Wildlife Animals,and considered as vulnerable species by IUCN,and also listed in addendum I and VU level by CITES.In the last several decades,due to destruction of habitat and hunting pressure,the distribution range and population size of this muntjac have been continued declining.Nowadays,it is only distributed in a narrow range,just including Zhejiang,Anhui,Jiangxi and Fujian provinces. There are two distribution centers in the range,one lies in the boundary areas of Zhejiang and Anhui,the other is located in the southwest of Zhejiang.Jiulongshan Nature Reserve is just in the latter.This mountainous area,in which the largest black muntjac population concentrated,has already been the most important distribution centre of the vulnerable species.It is estimated that 350-450 black muntjac lived in the reserve.The study was presented on 8 microsatellite loci analysis of 59 samples of black muntjac collected in Jiulongshan Nature Reserve, including 51 feces samples,5 skin and 3 muscle samples.In experiments, the DNA in feces was extracted by procedures including digestion in CTAB buffer,extraction by phenol/chloroform and purification by PCR Cleanup Kit.Finally,the results showed that the values of effective number of alleles(Ne)were from 3.764 to 7.179,the values of expected gene heterozygosity(He)were from 0.752 to 0.851,the values of polymorphism information content(PIC)were from 0.692 to 0.816,and their average values were 5.488,0.812 and 0.768 respectively,indicating a quite high level of genetic diversity of black muntjac population. Therefore,we made advices to prevent and recover destruction and fragmentation of habitat for protecting the resource of genetic diversity of black muntjac in Jiulongshan Nature Reserve.