Genetic diversity and differentiation in reef-buildingMilleporaspecies, as revealed by cross-species amplification of fifteen novel microsatellite loci

Abstract

Quantifying the genetic diversity in natural populations is crucial to address ecological and evolutionary questions. Despite recent advances in whole-genome sequencing, microsatellite markers have remained one of the most powerful tools for a myriad of population genetic approaches. Here, we used the 454 sequencing technique to develop microsatellite loci in the fire coralMillepora platyphylla, an important reef-builder of Indo-Pacific reefs.We tested the cross-species amplification of these loci in five other species of the genusMilleporaand analysed its success in correlation with the genetic distances between species using mitochondrial 16S sequences. We succeeded in discovering fifteen microsatellite loci in our target speciesM. platyphylla,among which twelve were polymorphic with 2–13 alleles and a mean observed heterozygosity of 0.411. Cross-species amplification in the five otherMilleporaspecies revealed a high probability of amplification success (71%) and polymorphism (59%) of the loci. Our results show no evidence of decreased heterozygosity with increasing genetic distance. However, only one locus enabled measures of genetic diversity in the Caribbean speciesM. complanatadue to high proportions of null alleles for most of the microsatellites. This result indicates that our novel markers may only be useful for the Indo-Pacific species ofMillepora.Measures of genetic diversity revealed significant linkage disequilibrium, moderate levels of observed heterozygosity (0.323–0.496) and heterozygote deficiencies for the Indo-Pacific species. The accessibility to new polymorphic microsatellite markers for hydrozoanMilleporaspecies creates new opportunities for future research on processes driving the complexity of their colonisation success on many Indo-Pacific reefs.