divergent evolutionary histories of dna markers in a hawaiian population of the coral montipora capitata
;Hollie M. Putnam;Diane K. Adams;Ehud Zelzion;Nicole E. Wagner;Huan Qiu;Tali Mass;Paul G. Falkowski;Ruth D. Gates;Debashish Bhattacharya
pediatrics2017Vol. 5pp. e3319-
141
putnam2017peerjdivergent
Abstract
We investigated intra- and inter-colony sequence variation in a population of the dominant Hawaiian coral Montipora capitata by analyzing marker gene and genomic data. Ribosomal ITS1 regions showed evidence of a reticulate history among the colonies, suggesting incomplete rDNA repeat homogenization. Analysis of the mitochondrial genome identified a major (M. capitata) and a minor (M. flabellata) haplotype in single polyp-derived sperm bundle DNA with some colonies containing 2–3 different mtDNA haplotypes. In contrast, Pax-C and newly identified single-copy nuclear genes showed either no sequence differences or minor variations in SNP frequencies segregating among the colonies. Our data suggest past mitochondrial introgression in M. capitata, whereas nuclear single-copy loci show limited variation, highlighting the divergent evolutionary histories of these coral DNA markers.