The future of endangered crayfish in light of protected areas and habitat fragmentation.

The long-term survival of a species requires, among other things, gene flow between populations. Approaches for the evaluation of fragmentation in the frame of freshwater habitats consider only a small amount of the information that combined demography and geography are currently able to provide. This study addresses two species of Austropotamobius crayfish in the light of population genetics, spatial ecology and protected areas of the Carpathians.

Fine-scale population genetics analysis of Platynereis dumerilii (Polychaeta, Nereididae) in the Black Sea: how do local marine currents drive geographical differentiation?

In this study we analyzed at a submeso-geographic scale (2 km) the genetic diversity of two sub-populations of Platynereis dumerilii and correlated this with the physical characteristics of the marine currents along the western Black Sea coast. For this purpose, we developed a set of 13 new polymorphic microsatellite markers and used them to assess the genetic differentiation, as well as the bi-directional migration rates between the studied sub-populations. We also computed the Peclet number (Pe) as an indicator of the relative effect of advection and eddy diffusion on larval dispersion for the specific conditions of the Black Sea study area.

Isolation and characterization of new microsatellite markers for the invasive softshell clam, Mya arenaria (L.) (Bivalvia: Myidae).

The invasive softshell clam (Mya arenaria Linnaeus, 1758) is native to the northwestern region of the Atlantic Ocean. This species has been introduced in the northeast Pacific and along the European coasts, due to intense naval transports and aquaculture, and it is now present in all the European seas. In this paper we describe seven new microsatellite loci for Mya arenaria.

Sinanodonta woodiana (Mollusca: Bivalvia: Unionidae): isolation and characterization of the first microsatellite markers.

Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea, 1834) is a large Unionid species with a real invasion success. It colonized Europe, Central America, the Indonesian Islands and recently North America. The species life cycle involves a larval parasitic stage on freshwater fish species which contributes to the spread of the mussel.

Isolation and characterization of the first microsatellite markers for the endangered relict mussel Hypanis colorata (Mollusca: Bivalvia: Cardiidae).

Hypanis colorata (Eichwald, 1829) (Cardiidae: Lymnocardiinae) is a bivalve relict species with a Ponto-Caspian distribution and is under strict protection in Romania, according to national regulations. While the species is depressed in the western Black Sea lagoons from Romania and Ukraine, it is also a successful invader in the middle Dniepr and Volga regions. Establishing a conservation strategy for this species or studying its invasion process requires knowledge about the genetic structure of the species populations.