Amphibians are declining at an alarming rate across the world. The species living at extreme environments are particularly vulnerable to extinction. Asiatic toad (Bufo gargarizans) is one of few amphibians at very high altitude and we have known little about their genetic diversity and conservation situations among highland populations. Using transcriptome sequencing, fourteen novel microsatellite markers were developed for Asiatic toad.

To characterize these loci, two populations of Asiatic toad from Tibetan Plateau were genotyped. All loci were variable, with the number of alleles ranging from 1 to 15 within populations. The expected and observed heterozygosity per locus ranged from 0.00 to 0.87 and from 0.00 to 0.89, respectively. Two of these loci showed significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and no linkage disequilibrium was detected.

It is expected that these markers will provide useful tools in population genetics and conservation studies for Asiatic toad.Researchers from Chengdu Institute of Biology conducted this research.