Genetic traces of recent long-distance dispersal in a predominantly self-recruiting coral

Abstract

Background: Understanding of the magnitude and direction of the exchange of individuals among geographically separated subpopulations that comprise a metapopulation (connectivity) can lead to an improved ability to forecast how fast coral reef organisms are likely to recover from disturbance events that cause extensive mortality. Reef corals that brood their larvae internally and release mature larvae are believed to show little exchange of larvae over ecological times scales and are therefore expected to recover extremely slowly from large-scale perturbations. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using analysis of ten DNA microsatellite loci, we show that although Great Barrier Reef (GBR) popula..