928.
The dioecious Red Sea soft coral
Parerythropodium fulvum fulvum breeds its nonsymbiotic planula larvae on the surface of female colonies for less than a week. After completing their development,
larvae crawl and settle near maternal colonies. Here we study the genetic polymorphism of developing larvae by the use of
amplified fragment-length polymorphism markers. Four reproductive colonies from shallow water populations (two from a dense
population and two from a less densely populated area 100 m away) were chosen, and ten larvae were randomly collected from
each colony. DNA was analyzed by using three different primer combinations producing 61, 63, 63 polymorphic markers, respectively.
All larvae exhibited different banding patterns from one another, illustrating the prominent role of sexual reproduction for
the production of larvae. Nei's mean genetic distances for all 12 possible pair-wise combinations for larval origins revealed,
in most cases, that sister larvae are genetically closer than larvae from different colonies and that larvae may be grouped
into three statistical clusters in accordance with colony origin and population studied. The usefulness of molecular methodologies
in coral population genetics is discussed.
Received: 26 March 1999 / Accepted: 19 October 1999
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