Genome-wide SNPs data revealed significant spatial genetic structure in deep sea precious coral: Corallium japonicum

Spatial autocorrelation analysis is one useful method for estimating the spatial range of gamete and larval dispersal for corals. However, there are few studies and no attempt of spatial autocorrelation analysis have been made for deep-sea coral species using genome-wide Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNPs) obtained by high-throughput technology. In this study, to reveal larval dispersal range of deep-sea coral species, we targeted Japanese red coral, Corallium japonicum that is suffering from poaching and overharvesting because of its high commercial value for jewelries. On using high-throughput technology, it is often hard to make a balance between the number of loci and the proportion of missing data per locus. Thus, we also examined the power of detecting spatial genetic structure by changing the number of loci and the proportion of missing data using both in De novo and mapping methods.