Population Genetic Structure of the Marine Penaeid Prawn- Penaeus Indicus H. Milne Edwards 1837

The thesis contains the results of an investigation on the " Population Genetic Structure of the Penaeus indicus " from southeast and southwest coasts of India. The P.indicus, popularly known as the Indian white prawn, is distributed widely in the Indo-Pacific, starting from New South wales in Australia in the east to the east coast of Africa in the west. Its heavy demand in the export market, the species has been exploited intensively from all along its areas of distribution in Indian waters. The population genetic characteristics of the species were examined by three independent but complementary techniques, namely, morphometrics (truss network), biochemical genetics (isozyme electrophoresis ) and molecular genetics (RFLP and RAPD). The east and west coast populations of the species may be genetically different. Due to certain constraints, the results obtained from the studies of restriction fragment length 70 polymorphism (RFLP) were limited. The significant difference in the number of bands in the sample populations strongly suggests that these two populations have considerably different population genetic structures