Eleven microsatellite molecular markers (SSR) were selected from He et al. 2003; Korir et al. 2014, Gonias et al. 2019).

Microsatellites are DNA regions of the repeated DNA. They have the advantages to be evenly scattered through the genome, to be present in thousands of unique loci, which can be specifically amplified from their conserved flanking regions. They are highly polymorphic which is the main required feature of a good molecular marker, but they are also co-dominant, which enables to discriminate homozygous and heterozygous states as well as allowing to retrieve pedigrees. Finally, they are widely viewed as selectively neutral. From a technical point of view, if the development costs are high, they are of an easy use and easy to standardize between different laboratories which facilitates results comparison, provided allele sizing has been previously standardized.