Restoration of coral populations in light of genetic diversity estimates
- 20 June 2009
- journal article
- other
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Coral Reefs
- Vol. 28 (3), 727-733
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-009-0520-x
Abstract
Due to the importance of preserving the genetic integrity of populations, strategies to restore damaged coral reefs should attempt to retain the allelic diversity of the disturbed population; however, genetic diversity estimates are not available for most coral populations. To provide a generalized estimate of genetic diversity (in terms of allelic richness) of scleractinian coral populations, the literature was surveyed for studies describing the genetic structure of coral populations using microsatellites. The mean number of alleles per locus across 72 surveyed scleractinian coral populations was 8.27 (±0.75 SE). In addition, population genetic datasets from four species (Acropora palmata, Montastraea cavernosa, Montastraea faveolata and Pocillopora damicornis) were analyzed to assess the minimum number of donor colonies required to retain specific proportions of the genetic diversity of the population. Rarefaction analysis of the population genetic datasets indicated that using 10 donor colonies randomly sampled from the original population would retain >50% of the allelic diversity, while 35 colonies would retain >90% of the original diversity. In general, scleractinian coral populations are genetically diverse and restoration methods utilizing few clonal genotypes to re-populate a reef will diminish the genetic integrity of the population. Coral restoration strategies using 10–35 randomly selected local donor colonies will retain at least 50–90% of the genetic diversity of the original population.Keywords
This publication has 67 references indexed in Scilit:
- Conservation Management of Tasmanian Devils in the Context of an Emerging, Extinction-threatening Disease: Devil Facial Tumor DiseaseEcohealth, 2007
- Discernment of sexual recruits is not critical for assessing population recovery of Acropora palmataMarine Ecology Progress Series, 2007
- Patterns of genetic variation in anthropogenically impacted populationsConservation Genetics, 2007
- Sexual vs. asexual reproduction in an ecosystem engineer: the massive coral Montastraea annularisJournal of Animal Ecology, 2007
- Ten microsatellite loci for the reef‐building coral Acropora millepora (Cnidaria, Scleractinia) from the Great Barrier Reef, AustraliaMolecular Ecology Notes, 2006
- Unexpected patterns of genetic structuring among locations but not colour morphs inAcropora nasuta(Cnidaria; Scleractinia)Molecular Ecology, 2003
- Rapid evolutionary dynamics and disease threats to biodiversityTrends in Ecology & Evolution, 2003
- Modeling Factors Affecting the Severity of Outbreeding DepressionConservation Biology, 2003
- MOLECULAR CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONSERVATIONEcology, 1998
- Restoration Strategies for Coral Reefs Damaged by Recreational Activities: The Use of Sexual and Asexual RecruitsRestoration Ecology, 1995