Towards a rigorous species delimitation framework for scleractinian corals based on RAD sequencing: the case study of Leptastrea from the Indo-Pacific

Accurate delimitation of species and their relationships is a fundamental issue in evolutionary biology and taxonomy and provides essential implications for conservation management. Scleractinian corals are difficult to identify because of their ecophenotypic and geographic variation and their morphological plasticity. Furthermore, phylogenies based on traditional loci are often unresolved at the species level because of uninformative loci. Here, we attempted to resolve these issues and proposed a consistent species definition method for corals by applying the genome-wide technique Restriction-site Associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) to investigate phylogenetic relationships and species delimitation within the genus Leptastrea. We collected 77 colonies from nine localities of the Indo-Pacific and subjected them to genomic analyses. Based on de novo clustering, we obtained 44,162 SNPs (3701 loci) from the holobiont dataset and 62,728 SNPs (9573 loci) from the reads that map to coral transcriptome to reconstruct a robust phylogenetic hypothesis of the genus. Moreover, nearly complete mitochondrial genomes and ribosomal DNA arrays were retrieved by reference mapping. We combined concatenation-based phylogenetic analyses with coalescent-based species tree and species delimitation methods. Phylogenies suggest the presence of six distinct species, three corresponding to known taxa, namely Leptastrea bottae, Leptastrea inaequalis, Leptastrea transversa, one characterized by a remarkable skeletal variability encompassing the typical morphologies of Leptastrea purpurea and Leptastrea pruinosa, and two distinct and currently undescribed species. Therefore, based on the combination of genomic, morphological, morphometric, and distributional data, we herein described Leptastrea gibbosa sp. n. from the Pacific Ocean and Leptastrea magaloni sp. n. from the southwestern Indian Ocean and formally considered L. pruinosa as a junior synonym of L. purpurea. Notably, mitogenomes and rDNA yielded a concordant yet less resolved phylogeny reconstruction compared to the ones based on SNPs. This aspect demonstrates the strength and utility of RADseq technology for disentangling species boundaries in closely related species and in a challenging group such as scleractinian corals.

Keyword(s)

ezRAD, dDocent, Holobiont, SNAPP, Bayes factor delimitation, Morphometrics, New species

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Data S1 List of coral samples analyzed in this study with collection information and the sequencing and bioinformatics statistics summary. In particular, the collection information ...
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Data S2 List of the Leptastrea specimens examined for the species treated in this study including museum and collected material in addition to those listed in the Taxonomic ...
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Data S3 Alignment of nearly complete mitochondrial genomes, including 10,837 bp.
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Data S4 Alignment of nearly complete nuclear ribosomal DNA regions, including 5835 bp.
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Data S5 Average (st. dev.) values of the six Leptastrea skeleton variables measured in this study: v1, maximum calice diameter; v2, minimum calice diameter; v3, maximum columella ...
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Figure S1 In situ images of colonies of the Leptastrea species analyzed in this study: S1_1 L. purpurea (a) UNIMIB MY143, Mayotte Island; (b) IRD HS3790, Isle of Pines, New Caledonia;...
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Figure S2 Maximum Likelihood (ML) phylogenetic tree of Leptastrea estimated with RAxML v8.2.10 using (a) the concatenated “holobiont-min” supermatrix (2075 loci including a total of...
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Figure S3 Maximum Likelihood (ML) phylogenetic tree of Leptastrea estimated with RAxML v8.2.10 using (a) the barcoding portion of the cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene of the ...
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Figure S4 Variability of skeleton morphology across specimens of the Leptastrea species examined in this study included in the genomic and morphometric analyses: L. purpurea (a–...
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Author's final draft
2547 Mo
Publisher's official version
2510 Mo
How to cite
Arrigoni Roberto, Berumen Michael L., Mariappan Kiruthiga G., Beck Pieter S. A., Hulver Ann Marie, Montano Simone, Pichon Michel, Strona Giovanni, Terraneo Tullia Isotta, Benzoni Francesca (2020). Towards a rigorous species delimitation framework for scleractinian corals based on RAD sequencing: the case study of Leptastrea from the Indo-Pacific. Coral Reefs. 39 (4). 1001-1025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-020-01924-8, https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00623/73501/

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