Isolation and characterization of microsatellite DNA markers in the malaria vector Anopheles nili

The mosquito Anopheles nili is widespread across tropical Africa and appears to be the major vector of malaria in some rural forested areas of central Africa. Here we describe the isolation of 11 microsatellite polymorphic loci from the A. nili genome, displaying a high among-individual diversity (0.58-0.96) in samples from west Africa. Two loci displayed a significant departure from Hardy-Weinberg proportions across all samples, suggesting a substantial frequency of null alleles. The remaining nine loci are good candidates for further genetic studies in this species.