Abstract

Queen Conch Strombus gigas is a large gastropod of significant economic importance across the Greater Caribbean region and currently considered as a commercially threatened species. To complement the genetic connectivity pat-terns for this specie through the Caribbean region, a primer pair flanking an AT rich mitochondrial region obtained from whole genome shotgun sequencing of S. gigas genome was used for assess the genetic diversity of queen conch popula-tions from Archipelago of San Andres, Old Providence and Santa Catalina (ASPSC). Average nucleotide and haplo-type diversity within S. gigas were found to be high. The neighbor joining tree of these haplotypes showed the presence of two different mitochondrial groups suggesting the possibility that two mitochondrial lineages of S. gigas are distributed through the ASPSC atolls. Remain to explore whether these haplotypic differences explain the high intrapopulation diversity previously reported in queen conchs from ASPSC and the distribution of these two mitochondrial groups in other Caribbean regions which would be crucial for selecting better fishery management rules.

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