Chinese pond turtle(Chinemys reevesii Gray,1831)is one of the main turtle species in China with commercial and medicinal importance,and it began to attract attention as a breeding species in 1990s and became one of the largest domestic breeding varieties.The population of farmed Chinese pond turtle increased in China,however,only little is known on the genetic status of this species.In this study,eight highly variable microsatellite loci were used to investigate genetic diversity and captive stocks structure of Chinese pond turtle in China.A total of 130 different alleles were detected in all examined loci.The number of alleles ranged from 9 to 26,with an average number of 16.25 per locus.The high number of alleles per locus within these stocks indicated the potential usefulness of these primers to characterize stock genetic structure of C.reevesii.The results demonstrated that seven stocks showed high polymorphic information content(PIC)values(ranged between 0.57 and 0.92),which is much higher than the standard value of 0.5,and the observed(H_O) and expected heterozygosity(H_E) ranged from 0.30 to 0.87 and from 0.60 to 0.93,respectively.The analysis of molecular variance(AMOVA)indicated that almost majority of the variance in the C.reevesii was within stocks(84.29%),and 5.91% was among stocks.All pairwise F_ST estimates between the seven stocks ranged from 0.014 3 to 0.112 7 and were also significantly different from zero(P<0.05),which showed that a low genetic divergence was between stocks.HardyWeinberg equilibrium analysis indicated that there were five loci in great significant HardyWeinberg disequilibrium,and each locus in each stock test showed that there were 19.64%(11/56)loci in significant genetic disequilibrium(P<0.05),14.29%(8/56)loci were at a very significant level(P<0.01),and the rest of the 66.07%(37/56)loci were in genetic equilibrium(P>0.05).The most plausible explanation for heterozygote deficiency is inbreeding in this cultured stocks.Examination of linkage disequilibrium using Fisher’s exact test revealed that all eight loci were in linkage equilibrium(P>0.05 for each pair of loci across all samples).The genetic distance and genetic similarity coefficient among stocks ranged from 0.106 6 to 0.646 8 and from 0.523 7 to 0.898 9,respectively.The dendrogram based on genetic distance showed two major clusters:the stock from Jingzhou,Hubei province(HBJZ)alone was in one cluster,which is sampled from the north of Yangtze River.The other cluster consists of individuals from sampling localities distributed in the south of Yangtze River.The isolation within C.reevesii may be attributed to Yangtze River,which acted as a barrier to block gene flow.Fortyfour private alleles occurred within the seven C.reevesii stocks and only one in the HNHS stock,which compares with 14 private alleles in the SH stock.The discovery of unique alleles within the stocks supported the conclusion that these stocks had differentiated from each other and that gene flow had been restricted among stocks gradually.Thus,it may be possible to form a new superior broodstock with high genetic diversity by combining turtles from different stocks,and measures should be taken to prevent further loss of genetic diversity.