Contact
Davíð Gíslason
Project Manager
davidg@matis.is
Lumpfish is now the single most important cleaner fish species to date and there is an extensive lumpfish translocation along the Norwegian coast. A reliable baseline information about the population genetics structure of lumpfish is a prerequisite for an optimal managing of the species to minimize possible genetic translocation and avoid possible hybridisation and introgression with local populations. The current study is a follow up of the study by Jónsdóttir et al. (2018) using expressed sequence tag-short tandem repeats (EST-STRs) markers. Samples (N = 291) were analyzed from six sample locations along the Norwegian coastline from south to north, with additional 18 samples of first-generation (from wild fish) reared fish from a fish farm outside Tromsø (North Norway). Present findings show a lack of population differentiation among lumpfish sampling population along the Norwegian coast using EST-STRs, which is in accordance with the findings of Jónsdóttir et al. (2018) where genomic STRs (g-STRs) were analyzed. Present findings indicate that should translocated lumpfish escape from salmon sea pens in Norway, this will probably have little impact on the genetic composition of the local lumpfish population.