[Coral-List] J-7, Session4 at ICRS2016: Speciation, hybridization and species boundaries in coral reef ecosystems

Jean-François Flot jflot at ulb.ac.be
Fri Jan 8 13:35:35 EST 2016


Dear all,

This is a reminder of our "species boundaries" session at the upcoming 
13th International Coral Reef Symposium.

Session 4:   Speciation, hybridization and species boundaries in coral 
reef ecosystems
https://www.sgmeet.com/icrs2016/sessionschedule.asp?SessionID=04

Description:
The species-level taxonomy of reef organisms such as corals and fishes 
is presently in a state of flux, with widespread incongruence between 
morphology and molecules being uncovered in many sequencing studies.
Although such incongruence may stem from morphological stasis, 
incomplete lineage sorting, phenotypic plasticity or interspecific 
hybridization, the latter phenomenon is of particular interest as it is 
a prediction of the reticulate evolution hypothesis proposed by J.E.N. 
Veron twenty years ago in his book "Corals in Space and Time". 
Hybridization in reef species, if frequent, would have far-reaching 
implications for coral reef conservation and management: for instance,
hybrids sometimes thrive in environments in which their parent species 
hardly survive, which suggests that hybrids might play an important role 
in adaptation to climate change. Despite these important stakes, 
however, the only well-studied example of hybridization in reef 
organisms concerns Acropora in the Caribbean. As multi-locus and 
genome-wide studies of coral reef organisms are now becoming 
increasingly frequent, the present session aims to stimulate the use of 
such approaches to find out how much hybridization is occurring on coral 
reefs and to revisit the results of crossing experiments in the light of 
genetic data.

The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, 15 January 2016; 
manuscripts for the proceedings may be sent until Friday 22 January.

For more information about the conference, please refer to 
http://sgmeet.com/icrs2016.

Best regards,
Andrew Baird (James Cook University)
Jean-François Flot (University of Brussels)
Nicole Fogarty (Nova Southeastern University)
Naoko Isomura (Okinawa National College of Technology)



-- 
Jean-François Flot
Associate Professor
Evolutionary Biology & Ecology - C.P. 160/12
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50
B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
http://ebe.ulb.ac.be/ebe/Flot.html


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