Data from: DNA barcoding reveals the coral “laboratory-rat”, Stylophora pistillata encompasses multiple identities

Stylophora pistillata is a widely used coral “lab-rat” species with highly variable morphology and a broad biogeographic range (Red Sea to western central Pacific). Here we show, by analysing Cytochorme Oxidase I sequences, from 241 samples across this range, that this taxon in fact comprises four deeply divergent clades corresponding to the Pacific-Western Australia, Chagos-Madagascar-South Africa, Gulf of Aden-Zanzibar- Madagascar, and Red Sea-Persian/Arabian Gulf-Kenya. On the basis of the fossil record of Stylophora, these four clades diverged from one another 51.5-29.6 Mya, i.e., long before the closure of the Tethyan connection between the tropical Indo-West Pacific and Atlantic in the early Miocene (16–24 Mya) and should be recognised as four distinct species. These findings have implications for comparative ecological and/or physiological studies carried out using Stylophora pistillata as a model species, and highlight the fact that phenotypic plasticity, thought to be common in scleractinian corals, can mask significant genetic variation.

鹿角杯形珊瑚（Stylophora pistillata）是一种被广泛用作实验模型的珊瑚模式物种，其形态具有高度变异性，且生物地理分布范围极广，涵盖从红海至中西太平洋的广阔海域。本研究通过对该分布范围内241份样本的细胞色素氧化酶I（Cytochrome Oxidase I）序列进行分析，发现该类群实际上包含4个深度分化的演化支，分别对应西太平洋-西澳大利亚、查戈斯群岛-马达加斯加-南非、亚丁湾-桑给巴尔-马达加斯加以及红海-波斯湾/阿拉伯湾-肯尼亚四个地理谱系。基于鹿角杯形珊瑚的化石记录，这4个演化支的分化时间为5150万至2960万年前（Mya），远早于中新世早期（1600万至2400万年前）热带印度-西太平洋与大西洋之间特提斯洋连接通道的闭合事件，因此应将其界定为4个独立的物种。上述研究结果对以鹿角杯形珊瑚作为模式物种开展的比较生态学和/或生理学研究具有重要启示意义，同时也凸显出此前被认为在石珊瑚目珊瑚（scleractinian corals）中普遍存在的表型可塑性，能够掩盖显著遗传分化这一关键事实。