Rapid molecular determination of sex for western North American chub (Gila spp.)

Gathering sex data is frequently a complicated matter for fish species lacking sexually dimorphic traits. Secondary sexual characteristics are cryptic or non-existent in many fishes during early life stages or outside of the breeding season, which may require lethal methods for determining sex. This complicates many aspects of conservation and population genetic studies, including 1) development of hatchery broodstocks for threatened and endangered species, 2) determination of sex ratios in wild populations, 3) impacts of sex ratios on effective population size estimates, and 4) limitations on abilities to perform genetic tagging and parentage assignment in wild populations. Here, we remedy this issue by using restriction site associated DNA sequencing to identify sex-linked single nucleotide polymorphisms in Gila elegans.