Polymorphic microsatellite DNA markers for penduline tits (Remiz spp.), a genus exhibiting diverse mating systems

Microsatellite markers are a critical tool for investigating kinship and parentage in animals, particularly in species with diverse mating systems and parental care strategies. Penduline tits are renowned for their flexible and diverse parental care strategies, ranging from biparental care to uniparental care and even biparental desertion. Investigating kinship, such as extra-pair paternity, within this taxon requires reliable, highly polymorphic molecular markers, yet available microsatellite resources for this genus remain limited. Here, we developed 16 polymorphic microsatellite loci for the Chinese penduline tit (R. consobrinus) using multi-individual whole-genome resequencing data. All 16 loci were highly polymorphic in 76 individuals of R. consobrinus, with 6–17 alleles per locus (mean = 11.9) and mean polymorphic information content of 0.822. Cross-species amplification revealed that all 16 loci successfully amplified in three other Remiz species, of which 15 loci were polymorphic in at least one species. This new set of microsatellite markers provides a robust and transferable genetic toolkit for future studies on kinship, parentage, and the evolution of mating systems across Remiz species.