Characterization Of Highly Polymorphic Microsatellite Markers And Paternity Analysis In The Golden Snub-nosed Monkey(Rhinopithecus Roxellana)

Infanticide by males are widespread in mammals,especially in polygyny.The most popular one to explain infanticide is that males increase their reproductive success by killing non-paternity infants in order to accelerate bringing the females into estrus.The golden snub-nosed monkey(Rhinopithecus roxellana)is a polygynous Asian colobines inhabiting in temperate forest in the mountainous highlands.It is characterized by a multilevel society(MLS)which is composed of several one-male units(OMU)and one or more all-male units(AMU).Although lack of food resources and adult females concentrately distributed in the OMU result in intensely male-male competion,which will increase the risk of infanticide,we did not find infanticide by males in Qinling mountains in the decades of research,only to find frequently females extra-unit copulations.We collected 20 samples of survival mother-infants born in 2015 via noninvasive sampling in Zhouzhi National Nature Reserve,Qinling Mountains in 2016.In order to continue the earlier work to verify the females R.roxellana have developed a sort of mechanism of extra-unit copulations to spread paternity estimates,which will avoid male infanticide effciently.Microsatellite has been widely applied in the endangered animals paternity analysis and protection in the study.A lot of cross-species microsatellite markers used in R.roxellana were not powerful enough for some study,sometimes they could not greatly amplify DNA in R.roxellana or have low numbers of alleles.We sieved potential microsatellite with SSR Hunter in whole genome of R.roxellana.After PCR,multicolor fluorescence labeling,genotyping,finally we obtained 29 highly polymorphic tetranucleotide loci,whose mean PIC is 0.549±0.105.We collected 21 highly polymorphic tetranucleotide loci to do paternity analysis.According to the CERVUS V3.0 analysis,only 8 infants(42%)in 2015 were sired by resident males.Then we run a paired-sample T test to compare the genetic relationship of extra-unit copulation females and resident males with the females and genetic fathers(n=33,p = 0.567),which show that the females may not mate with males have further genetic relationship to avoid inbreeding or increase the genetic diversity.According our results we suggest that the extra-unit copulation females seems prefer to young bachelor males and high hierarchy resident males.In conclusion,we presume that the female R.roxellana maybe mate with several males,which is spread paternity estimates to avoid male infanticide.