The inheritance mode of seven microsatellite markers was investigated in Patinopecten yessoensis larvae from four con-trolled crosses, and the feasibility of using these markers for kinship estimation was also examined. All the seven microsatellite loci were compatible with Mendelian inheritance. Neither sex-linked barriers to transmission nor major barriers to fertilization between gametes from the parents were evident. Two of the seven loci showed the presence of null alleles in two families, suggesting the need to conduct comprehensive species-specific inheritance studies for microsatellite loci used in population genetic studies. However, even if the null allele heterozygotes were considered as homozygotes in the calculation of genetic distance, offspring from four fami-lies were all unambiguously discriminated in the neighbor-joining dendrogram. This result indicates that the microsatellite markers used may be capable of discriminating between related and unrelated scallop larvae in the absence of pedigree information, and of investigating the effective number of parents contributing to the hatchery population of the Japanese scallop.