In this report, we describe the isolation and characterization of microsatellite loci for forest musk deer (
Moschus berezovskii
) through an improved enrichment protocol. Five new markers were isolated from the genomic DNA of forest musk deer and showed high polymorphism with 4-13 alleles in 24 sampled individuals from the population of Jinfeng Mountain, Sichuan Province, China. The observed and expected heterozygosities were from 0.429-0.957 and 0.587-0.902, respectively. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) value in these five loci was 0.730. This suggests that the five microsatellite loci are a valuable tool for further studies about forest musk deer.
