4.1 Article

Species and population genomic differentiation in Pocillopora corals (Cnidaria, Hexacorallia)

Journal

GENETICA
Volume 150, Issue 5, Pages 247-262

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10709-022-00165-7

Keywords

Coral; Species delineation; RAD-sequencing; Pocillopora; Genetic structure; Clonal reproduction

Funding

  1. French Government Investissements d'Avenir program of the French National Research Agency (ANR) [ANR11-LABX-0061, ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02]
  2. ADACNI program of the French National Research Agency (ANR) [ANR-12-ADAP-0016]
  3. European FEDER Fund [1166-39417]
  4. France Genomique National Infrastructure [ANR-10-INBS-09]
  5. Laboratoire d'Excellence (LABEX) TULIP [ANR-10-LABX-41]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Correctly delimiting species and populations is crucial for connectivity, adaptation, and conservation studies. In this study, we used RAD-sequencing to investigate species differentiation and genetic structure in Pocillopora spp. populations from Oman and French Polynesia. We found significant genetic differentiation between samples from the two regions and identified clonal lineages in both populations.
Correctly delimiting species and populations is a prerequisite for studies of connectivity, adaptation and conservation. Genomic data are particularly useful to test species differentiation for organisms with few informative morphological characters or low discrimination of cytoplasmic markers, as in Scleractinians. Here we applied Restriction site Associated DNA sequencing (RAD-sequencing) to the study of species differentiation and genetic structure in populations of Pocillopora spp. from Oman and French Polynesia, with the objectives to test species hypotheses, and to study the genetic structure among sampling sites within species. We focused here on coral colonies morphologically similar to P. acuta (damicornis type beta). We tested the impact of different filtering strategies on the stability of the results. The main genetic differentiation was observed between samples from Oman and French Polynesia. These samples corresponded to different previously defined primary species hypotheses (PSH), i.e., PSHs 12 and 13 in Oman, and PSH 5 in French Polynesia. In Oman, we did not observe any clear differentiation between the two putative species PSH 12 and 13, nor between sampling sites. In French Polynesia, where a single species hypothesis was studied, there was no differentiation between sites. Our analyses allowed the identification of clonal lineages in Oman and French Polynesia. The impact of clonality on genetic diversity is discussed in light of individual-based simulations.

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