Mjh. Van Oppen et al., Examination of species boundaries in the Acropora cervicornis group (Scleractinia, Cnidaria) using nuclear DNA sequence analyses, MOL ECOL, 9(9), 2000, pp. 1363-1373
Although Acropora is the most species-rich genus of the scleractinian (ston
y) corals, only three species occur in the Caribbean: A. cervicornis, A. pa
lmata and A. prolifera. Based on overall coral morphology, abundance and di
stribution patterns, it has been suggested that A. prolifera may be a hybri
d between A. cervicornis and A. palmata. The species boundaries among these
three morphospecies were examined using DNA sequence analyses of the nucle
ar Pax-C 46/47 intron and the ribosomal DNA internal Transcribed Spacer (IT
S1 and ITS2) and 5.8S regions. Moderate levels of sequence variability were
observed in the ITS and 5.8S sequences (up to 5.2% overall sequence differ
ence), but variability within species was as large as between species and a
ll three species carried similar sequences. Since this is unlikely to repre
sent a shared ancestral polymorphism, the data suggest that introgressive h
ybridization occurs among the three species. For the Pax-C intron, A. cervi
cornis and A. palmata had very distinct allele frequencies and A. cervicorn
is carried a unique allele at a frequency of 0.769 (although sequence diffe
rences between alleles were small). All A. prolifera colonies examined were
heterozygous for the Pax-C intron, whereas heterozygosity was only 0.286 a
nd 0.333 for A. cervicornis and A. palmata, respectively. These data suppor
t the hypothesis that A. prolifera is the product of hybridization between
two species that have a different allelic composition for the Pax-C intron,
i.e. A. cervicornis and A. palmata. We therefore suggest that A: prolifera
is a hybrid between A. cervicornis and A. palmata, which backcrosses with
the parental species at low frequency.