| The Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, native to northeast Asia, is one of the most important cultured shellfish species. In Europe, Pacific oysters first settled along the Atlantic coasts of France at the end of the 1960s but rapidly spread and are now widely established. Twenty-two sites in the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland, Denmark, France and Spain were sampled to assess genetic diversity and differentiation. Hatchery-propagated stocks from two hatcheries located in the UK also were included. Two main genetic clusters were identified from pairwise genetic differentiation indexes, Bayesian clustering methods or neighbour-joining analysis, based on 7 microsatellite loci: (1) a Northeast cluster (including feral samples from East England, Ireland and... |
