Genetic Connectivity of the Dungeness Crab (Cancer magister) Across Oceanographic Regimes

ABSTRACT Limited approaches exist for studying population connectivity in widely dispersing marine benthic invertebrates. Genetic techniques can provide important insights toward identifying recruitment trajectories. Here, 10 microsatellite loci were used to examine connectivity among Oregon Dungeness crabs (Cancer magister, Dana, 1852) in the California Current System (CCS) (n = 801) as well as between Oregon and two British Columbia populations, Alison Sound (n = 54) and Boundary Bay (n = 48). Using population-based methods (F-statistics), evidence for weak genetic differentiation was found among 12 sites in Oregon that did not conform to a pattern of isolation by distance.Whereas individual-based methods (kinship analyses) indicated higher than expected relatedness in two Oregon sites, this finding did not help interpret the pattern of genetic differentiation observed among sites in the CCS. Extending our analyses to British Columbia, it was determined that genetic diversity within the Boundary Bay pop...