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Isolation by distance in the scleractinian coral Seriatopora hystrix from the Red Sea

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Abstract

Pelagic dispersal of larvae in sessile marine invertebrates could in principle lead to a homogeneous gene pool over vast distances, yet there is increasing evidence of surprisingly high levels of genetic differentiation on small spatial scale. To evaluate whether larval dispersal is spatially limited and correlated with distance, we conducted a study on the widely distributed, viviparous reef coral Seriatopora hystrix from the Red Sea where we investigated ten populations separated between ~0.150 km and ~610 km. We addressed these questions with newly developed, highly variable microsatellite markers. We detected moderate genetic differentiation among populations based on both F ST and R ST (0.089 vs. 0.136, respectively) as well as considerable heterozygote deficits. Mantel tests revealed isolation by distance effects on a small geographic scale (≤20 km), indicating limited dispersal of larvae. Our data did not reveal any evidence against strictly sexual reproduction among the studied populations.

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Acknowledgements

The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority kindly gave us permission to sample S. hystrix from the Red Sea. This study was funded by the Minerva Foundation, the Minerva Center for Marine Invertebrates Immunology and Developmental Biology and by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (NU 51/5 to BN and RT). We thank all people who provided field assistance, especially M. Rehberg and L. Bongiorni. We are grateful to X. Turon for running the simulations to evaluate the possible occurrence of clonal reproduction. We also thank J.M. Bohn for his help with the figures and A. Baird for carefully checking our English.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department Biologie II, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Großhaderner Straße 2, 82152, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany

    Elke Maier & Beate Nürnberger

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, I.E.N.S, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA14YQ, UK

    Ralph Tollrian

  3. Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Tel Shikmona, National Institute of Oceanography, PO Box 8030, Haifa, 31080, Israel

    Baruch Rinkevich

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  1. Elke Maier
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  4. Beate Nürnberger
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Correspondence to Elke Maier.

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Communicated by O. Kinne, Oldendorf/Luhe

Appendix

Appendix

For a given population and locus with n apparent homozygotes, we computed the likelihood of all possible genotype sets in which 1, 2,... n homozygotes had been replaced by heterozygotes involving a null allele. Non-amplifying colony/locus combinations were interpreted as null homozygotes provided that the other two loci of the same colony had amplified, thus controlling for poor DNA quality. The likelihood computations were based on allele frequency estimates from the modified genotype sets under the assumption of random mating. The alternate data set was assembled from the maximum-likelihood genotype sets per population and locus. The estimated maximal local frequencies of null alleles that were inferred by our method were 0.21 (Sh4.24), 0.25 (Sh2.15) and 0.37 (Sh3.32). The minimal local estimates were zero for all three loci. Whenever our method detected the presence of a null allele in a given locus/site combination (ML frequency > 0), its frequency correlated very strongly (r>0.75) with estimates from two published methods (Chakraborty et al. 1992; Brookfield 1996). These approaches compute null allele frequencies solely based on observed heterozygote deficits, either with (Brookfield 1996) or without (Chakraborty et al. 1992) including non-amplifying samples as data (= null homozygotes). It is interesting to note, though, that there were cases in which our ML frequency of the null allele was zero, while the F IS-based methods inferred appreciable non-zero frequencies. In all of these cases, the likelihood curve was rather flat so that no particular estimate was strongly supported. It appears that the consideration of the specific genotypic constellations by our method (rather than just F IS) tended to favour the hypothesis of no null allele in these cases. In keeping with these observations, F IS estimates based on the alternate data set were not necessarily zero but they were non-significant throughout.

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Maier, E., Tollrian, R., Rinkevich, B. et al. Isolation by distance in the scleractinian coral Seriatopora hystrix from the Red Sea. Marine Biology 147, 1109–1120 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-005-0013-6

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