Development of species‐specific markers in an organism with endosymbionts: microsatellites in the scleractinian coral Seriatopora hystrix

We report on the development of microsatellites in Seriatopora hystrix , a coral with algal endosymbionts. In order to obtain a genomic library free of algal DNA, we conducted a whole genome preamplification from minute amounts of symbiont‐free tissue. The resulting fragments were cloned into pUC18, and Escherichia coli were transformed with the recombinant plasmids. Twenty‐nine microsatellites were isolated from a library screen with a fluorescently labelled (CA) 15 probe. Five of these yielded reliable polymorphic markers.