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Population connectivity of the plating coral Agaricia lamarcki from southwest Puerto Rico

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Abstract

Identifying genetic connectivity and discrete population boundaries is an important objective for management of declining Caribbean reef-building corals. A double digest restriction-associated DNA sequencing protocol was utilized to generate 321 single nucleotide polymorphisms to estimate patterns of horizontal and vertical gene flow in the brooding Caribbean plate coral, Agaricia lamarcki. Individual colonies (n = 59) were sampled from eight locations throughout southwestern Puerto Rico from six shallow (~ 10–20 m) and two mesophotic habitats (~ 30–40 m). Descriptive summary statistics (fixation index, F ST), analysis of molecular variance, and analysis through landscape and ecological associations and discriminant analysis of principal components estimated high population connectivity with subtle subpopulation structure among all sampling localities.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Ivonne Bejarano, Milton Carlo, Michael Nemeth, Hector Ruiz, Clark Sherman, Evan Tuohy, Orlando Espinosa and Jaaziel Garcia for assistance in specimen collection. We acknowledge the constructive suggestions by Pim Bongaerts. This work was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (NA06NOS4780190), through the Caribbean Coral Reef Institute and Puerto Rico Sea Grant Project # R-101-1-14 awarded to NVS. We thank the ReFuGe 2020 Consortium, (C. Xin, P. Lundgren, C.R. Voolstra) for sharing unpublished data of Symbiodinium genomes with us. NH was the recipient of Sea Grant Puerto Rico SEED money (PD-313). Research permits were obtained from the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, Puerto Rico (O-VS-PVS15-MA-00017-29092014).

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Author notes

  1. Nicholas M. Hammerman, Ramon E. Rivera-Vicens, Matthew P. Galaska have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, PO Box 9000, Mayagüez, PR, 00681, USA

    Nicholas M. Hammerman, Ramon E. Rivera-Vicens, Ernesto Weil, Richard S. Appledoorn & Nikolaos V. Schizas

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, 101 Rouse Life Science Building, Auburn, AL, 36849, USA

    Matthew P. Galaska

  3. Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, PO Box 9000, Mayagüez, PR, 00681, USA

    Monica Alfaro

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  1. Nicholas M. Hammerman
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  4. Ernesto Weil
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Correspondence to Nikolaos V. Schizas.

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Hammerman, N.M., Rivera-Vicens, R.E., Galaska, M.P. et al. Population connectivity of the plating coral Agaricia lamarcki from southwest Puerto Rico. Coral Reefs 37, 183–191 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-017-1646-x

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