Divergent evolutionary histories of DNA markers in a Hawaiian population of the coral .

We investigated intra- and inter-colony sequence variation in a population of the dominant Hawaiian coral by analyzing marker gene and genomic data. Ribosomal ITS1 regions showed evidence of a reticulate history among the colonies, suggesting incomplete rDNA repeat homogenization. Analysis of the mitochondrial genome identified a major () and a minor () haplotype in single polyp-derived sperm bundle DNA with some colonies containing 2-3 different mtDNA haplotypes. In contrast, and newly identified single-copy nuclear genes showed either no sequence differences or minor variations in SNP frequencies segregating among the colonies. Our data suggest past mitochondrial introgression in , whereas nuclear single-copy loci show limited variation, highlighting the divergent evolutionary histories of these coral DNA markers.