DEVELOPMENT OF GENOMIC RESOURCES FOR COMMERCIAL AND RESTORATION AQUACULTURE OF RED DRUM AND SOUTHERN FLOUNDER

Red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) and southern flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) support important recreational fisheries in the southeastern United States, and both species are cultured for stock-enhancement purposes.  Genomic tools have the potential to greatly inform restoration aquaculture practices by providing information about fine-scale population structure and the partitioning of adaptive genetic variation in the wild and can be used to efficiently match hatchery brood fish with release sites.  In particular, restriction-site associated DNA (RAD) sequencing has provided a means of genotyping individual fish at thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and mapping the same panel of SNP loci to the genome by linkage mapping.  This has the advantage of providing a genomic context for individual loci with significantly less cost and computational overhead than genome sequencing and assembly.  The approach also can provide information about trends in effective population size over time.  Genomics tools also provide a valuable set of resources for commercial aquaculture of both species.  The development of genomic resources for red drum and southern flounder and the potential applications of the tools for restoration and commercial aquaculture of the two species are discussed.