Abstract
A major challenge in coral biology is to find the most adequate and phylogenetically informative characters that allow for distinction of closely related coral species. Therefore, data on corallite morphology and genetic data are often combined to increase phylogenetic resolution. In this study, we address the question to which degree genetic data and quantitative information on overall coral colony morphologies identify similar groupings within closely related morphospecies of the Caribbean coral genus Madracis. Such comparison of phylogenies based on colony morphology and genetic data will also provide insight into the degree to which genotype and phenotype overlap. We have measured morphological features of three closely related Caribbean coral species of the genus Madracis (M. formosa, M. decactis and M. carmabi). Morphological differences were then compared with phylogenies of the same species based on two nuclear DNA markers, i.e. ATPSα and SRP54. Our analysis showed that phylogenetic trees based on (macroscopical) morphological properties and phylogenetic trees based on DNA markers ATPSα and SRP54 are partially similar indicating that morphological characteristics at the colony level provide another axis, in addition to commonly used features such as corallite morphology and ecological information, to delineate genetically different coral species. We discuss this new method that allows systematic quantitative comparison between morphological characteristics of entire colonies and genetic data.
Highlights
Classical morphological taxonomy of corals is generally based on detailed descriptions of corallite characteristics [1]
Our findings show that classification of the coral colonies based on overall colony morphology separates the data set into three groups
Clade I consisted of five M. formosa colonies and included one M. decactis colony
Summary
Classical morphological taxonomy of corals is generally based on detailed descriptions of corallite characteristics [1]. Given the large variation in coral colony morphologies [2] quantitative methods that allow for accurate measurement and quantification of such variation would improve our ability to use such data for increased taxonomic resolution in studies on coral systematics. Because precisely measured morphological traits are difficult to obtain for three dimensional branching structures (e.g., branching angle and branch spacing), rigorous quantitative morphological descriptions at the colony level are generally impossible to produce. Another difficulty with morphological data is quantification. Exact and continuous measurements of three dimensional morphological are expected to be more informative [7] and increase statistical resolution
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