Ecological diversification and Phylogenomics of the Caribbean octocoral genus Eunicea

The genus Eunicea is the most abundant and diverse group of Octocorals in Caribbean reefs, with more than 30 species described in sympatry; however, only 16 of them are considered valid until now, underestimating the real diversity in this group. In this study, we provide a phylogenomics and metabarcoding approach to understand, from a holobiont perspective, its evolution and ecological dynamics. First, we made a phylogenomic reconstruction of the coral by a reduced-representation sequencing (nextRAD-illumina seq), to scan thousands of SNP across the genome over more than 200 Eunicea samples, from a broad sampling across the Caribbean. Second, on the same sampling, we characterized bacteria and apicomplexa by a metabarcoding strategy (16S RNA-illumina seq) to integrate characterization of the microbiome composition and the evolutionary relationships between bacterial and apicomplexan symbionts and their octocoral hosts.