Abstract: Culter alburnus, common name topmouth culter, is one high economic value freshwater fish. To explore the genetic diversity and genetic relationship of C. alburnus population in Anhui province, the genetic diversity and genetic structure of four wild populations from Wuchang Lake, Chao Lake, main stream of Huaihe River and Xin’an River based on microsatellite markers were analyzed. The range of average allele number (Na), expected heterozygosity (He) and polymorphic information content (PIC) of four populations were 10.4-12.2, 0.739-0.778 and 0.689-0.738, respectively. The effective allele number (Ne) was between 5.9 and 6.9 and observed heterozygosity (Ho) was from 0.654 to 0.800, indicating that all populations had high genetic diversity. AMOVA revealed that genetic variation mainly came from within the population (95.71%), and only accounted for 4.29% among the populations. The genetic differentiation coefficient (Fst) of all population was 0.043, and the Fst among populations was between 0.025 and 0.056, indicating low degree of genetic differentiation. The value of gene flow (Nm) ranged from 4.21 to 9.75, indicating frequent interpopulation gene exchange. Phylogenetic tree, developed based on genetic distance between all pairs of populations, displayed that Xin’an River population had the closest relationship with Chaohu population, and Huai River population has the furthest relationship. The results of using software Structure 2.3.4 showed that the optimal cluster grouping was also 4, but it did not correspond to each sampling population, and there were many genetically similar individuals among populations. This study indicated there were high genetic diversity, insignificant genetic differentiation and germplasm mixed among the four populations of C. alburnus.

Key words: Culter alburnus, microsatellite, genetic diversity, Anhui province, germplasm mixed