[Coral-List] New Publication

[shashank]

Dear List members  
Here is a new paper published today with online Open Access in Scientific Reports.

Title: DNA barcoding reveals the coral ‘‘laboratory-rat’’, Stylophora pistillata encompasses multiple identities   

Abstract: Stylophora pistillata is a widely used coral ‘‘lab-rat’’ species with highly variable morphology and a broad biogeographic range (Red Sea to western central Pacific). Here we show, by analysing Cytochorme Oxidase I sequences, from 241 samples across this range, that this taxon in fact comprises four deeply divergent clades corresponding to the Pacific-Western Australia, Chagos-Madagascar-South Africa, Gulf of Aden-Zanzibar-Madagascar, and Red Sea-Persian/Arabian Gulf-Kenya. On the basis of the fossil record of Stylophora, these four clades diverged from one another 51.5-29.6 Mya, i.e., long before the closure of the Tethyan connection between the tropical Indo-West Pacific and Atlantic in the early Miocene (16–24 Mya) and should be recognised as four distinct species. These findings have implications for comparative ecological and/or physiological studies carried out using Stylophora pistillata as a model species, and highlight the fact that phenotypic plasticity, thought to be common in scleractinian corals, can mask significant genetic variation.

Wishes
shashank
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Whether our efforts are, or not, favored by life, let us be able to say, when we come near the great goal,I have done what I could - Louis Pasteur

Role of Infinitely Small in Nature is Infinitely Large - Louis Pasteur
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Keshavmurthy Shashank
Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Chen's lab
Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica (BRCAS), 128 Academia Road Sec. 2, Nankang, Taipei 115 Taiwan
Alt. E-mail: coralresearchtaiwan at gmail.com (mailto:iamshanky15 at yahoo.com), coralresearch at me.com (mailto:coralresearch at mac.com)