Abstract

Background

Heliopora coerulea, the blue coral, is the octocoral characterized by its blue skeleton. Recently, two Heliopora species were delimited by DNA markers: HC-A and HC-B. To clarify the genomic divergence of these Heliopora species (HC-A and HC-B) from sympatric and allopatric populations in Okinawa, Japan, we used a high throughput reduced representation genomic DNA sequencing approach (ezRAD).

Results

We found 6742 biallelic SNPs shared among all target populations, which successfully distinguished the HC-A and HC-B species in both the sympatric and allopatric populations, with no evidence of hybridization between the two. In addition, we detected 410 fixed SNPs linking functional gene differences, including heat resilience and reproductive timing, between HC-A and HC-B.

Conclusions

We confirmed clear genomic divergence between Heliopora species and found possible genes related to stress-responses and reproduction, which may shed light on the speciation process and ecological divergence of coral species.

Details

Title
RADseq population genomics confirms divergence across closely related species in blue coral (Heliopora coerulea)
Author
Iguchi, Akira  VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Yoshioka, Yuki; Forsman, Zac H; Ingrid S.S. Knapp; Toonen, Robert J; Hongo, Yuki; Nagai, Satoshi; Yasuda, Nina
Pages
1-7
Section
Research article
Publication year
2019
Publication date
2019
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
e-ISSN
27307182
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-019-1522-0
ProQuest document ID
2546689922
Copyright
© 2019. This work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.