Phylogenetic position of the coral symbiont Ostreobium (Ulvophyceae) inferred from chloroplast genome data

H Verbruggen; VR Marcelino; MD Guiry; MCM Cremen; CJ Jackson

Journal article

Phylogenetic position of the coral symbiont Ostreobium (Ulvophyceae) inferred from chloroplast genome data

H Verbruggen, VR Marcelino, MD Guiry, MCM Cremen, CJ Jackson

Journal of Phycology | WILEY | Published : 2017

DOI: 10.1111/jpy.12540

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Abstract

The green algal genus Ostreobium is an important symbiont of corals, playing roles in reef decalcification and providing photosynthates to the coral during bleaching events. A chloroplast genome of a cultured strain of Ostreobium was available, but low taxon sampling and Ostreobium's early-branching nature left doubt about its phylogenetic position. Here, we generate and describe chloroplast genomes from four Ostreobium strains as well as Avrainvillea mazei and Neomeris sp., strategically sampled early-branching lineages in the Bryopsidales and Dasycladales respectively. At 80,584 bp, the chloroplast genome of Ostreobium sp. HV05042 is the most compact yet found in the Ulvophyceae. The Avrai..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Heroen Verbruggen Author

Vanessa Rossetto Marcelino Author

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Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Biological Resources Study (RFL213-08), the Australian Research Council (FT110100585, DP150100705), the University of Melbourne (ECR and SPRINT grants to HV and MIRS/MIFRS to VRM and MCMC), and by use of the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI) at the University of Melbourne (projects UOM0007, UOM0021) and the Nectar Research Cloud, a collaborative Australian research platform supported by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). We thank Claude Payri, the staff of the Alis research vessel and the La Planete Revisitee program for facilitating fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. We are very grateful to Francesca Benzoni for providing coral identifications, Fabio Rindi for contributing his insights in the Latin language, and Laura Lagourgue, Craig Schneider, Michael Wynne and Sigrid Berger for help with the identifications of algal samples. The authors declare no conflict of interest.