Data from: Genetic relatedness does not retain spatial pattern across multiple spatial scales: dispersal and colonization in the coral, Pocillopora damicornis

Patterns of isolation-by-distance are uncommon in coral populations. Here,
we depart from historical trends of large-scale, geographic genetic
analyses by scaling down to a single patch reef in Kāne‘ohe Bay, Hawai‘i,
and map and genotype all colonies of the coral, Pocillopora damicornis.
Six polymorphic microsatellite loci were used to assess population genetic
and clonal structure and to calculate individual colony pairwise
relatedness values. Our results point to an inbred, highly clonal reef
(between 53 and 116 clonal lineages out of 2352 genotyped colonies) with a
very skewed genet frequency distribution (over 70% of the reef was
composed of just seven genotypes). Spatial autocorrelation analyses
revealed that corals found close together on the reef were more
genetically related than corals further apart. Spatial genetic structure
disappears, however, as spatial scale increases and then becomes negative
at the largest distances. Stratified, random sampling of three
neighbouring reefs confirms that reefs are demographically open and
inter-reef genetic structuring was not detected. Attributing process to
pattern in corals is complicated by their mixed reproductive strategies.
Separate autocorrelation analyses, however, show that the spatial
distribution of both clones and non-clones contribute to spatial genetic
structure. Overall, we demonstrate genetic structure on an intra-reef
scale and genetic panmixia on an inter-reef scale indicating that, for P.
damicornis, small- and large-scale dispersal processes are likely not the
same. By starting from an inter-individual, intra-reef level before
scaling up to an inter-reef level, this study demonstrates that
isolation-by-distance patterns for the coral P. damicornis are limited to
small scales and highlights the importance of investigating genetic
patterns and ecological processes at multiple scales.