Determination of genetic diversity of the cuttlefish Sepiella japonica inhabiting Chinese coastal waters using the mitochondrial D-loop region: The valuable inspiration to artificial releasing project

The cuttlefish Sepiella japonica, was once one of the four major marine fisheries of China and has dramatically declined since the 1980s to near extinction. The artificial releasing project was launched for resource restocking since 2006. Aiming to provide some valuable information to the management of the releasing project, the mitochondrial DNA control region sequence was employed to assess the genetic variation of various geographical populations in present study. The genetic diversity of S. japonica was characterized with the low value of nucleotide diversity (0.00313 ± 0.070). Pairwise fixation index (Fst) analysis indicated insignificant genetic differentiation among southern populations (p > 0.05). However, the QD population showed the significant genetic differention with other populations (p < 0.05). The highest genetic diversity was detected in ND population and was recommended to be the germplasm resources for artificial releasing project. In summary, the presented results provided some new information for genetic assessment in this study that would be crucial for establishing effective releasing strategies for this species.