Isolation and characterisation of 26 microsatellite loci from a widespread tropical hydrozoan, Macrorhynchia phoenicea (Leptothecata, Aglaopheniidae), and cross-amplification in closely related species

•We isolated and characterized 26 microsatellites from Macrorhynchia phoenicea.•Cross amplifications identified up to 18 transferrable loci to other Aglaopheniidae.•They will be used in population genetic and species delimitation studies.

We isolated and characterized 26 microsatellite loci for Macrorhynchia phoenicea (Busk, 1852), a rather common tropical hydrozoan from the Indo-Pacific. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 4 to 24. The observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.000 to 0.970 and the expected heterozygosity from 0.029 to 0.833. Ten loci were at Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. No pair of loci presented linkage disequilibrium. Transferability of up to 18 loci was positive across four other Aglaopheniidae species from different genera. These loci will be used in studying reef population connectivity for these particular species at the scale of the Indo-Pacific, a promising but little explored research field.