Molecular Phylogeny and Taxonomy of the Coral Genus (Cnidaria, Scleractinia, Merulinidae) in Japan, With the First Records of Two Species.

The scleractinian coral genus is widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific region and is common from the subtropical to the warm-temperate regions in Japan. Three new species in this genus have recently been reported from south-eastern Australia or the Red Sea. However, taxonomic and species diversity have been little studied so far in Japan. In this study, we analyzed 112 specimens of collected from the subtropical to the warm-temperate regions in Japan to clarify the species diversity in the country. This analysis was based on skeletal morphological and molecular analyses using three genetic markers of the nuclear 28S rDNA, histone H3 gene, and the mitochondrial noncoding intergenic region between COI and tRNAmet. The molecular phylogenetic trees showed that our specimens are separated mainly into four clades. Considering the morphological data with the molecular phylogenetic relationships, we confirmed a total of nine species, including two species, and , recorded for the first time in Japan. Although eight out of nine species were genetically included within , one species, , was genetically distant from all other species and was closely related to the genus , suggesting the return of this species to the genus to which it was originally ascribed. Two newly recorded species were reciprocally monophyletic, while the other six species (excluding ) clustered in two clades without forming species-specific lineages, including three polyphyletic species. Thus, the species boundary between species in remains unclear in most species using these three sequenced loci.