Seascape genomics uncovers complex connectivity patterns in reef corals

Understanding how abiotic conditions shape biodiversity and population connectivity is essential for predicting future trends associated with climate change. Coral reefs face severe losses, making effective conservation strategies increasingly urgent. Success in these efforts relies on assessing genetic connectivity and identifying barriers and corridors to gene flow. The latter is influenced both by the environment and transport, but their relative importance can be non-intuitive and has rarely been assessed. Here, we use a seascape genomics approach to examine the population genetic structure and connectivity in scleractinian corals. Our findings reveal distinct patterns of genetic structure across species, likely influenced by seasonal differences in reproduction combined with the seasonality of ocean currents and environmental conditions. Using geographic distances, larval dispersal modelling, and environmental data, we identify a complex interaction of isolation by distance, isolation by resistance, and isolation by environment processes affecting gene flow across populations. These findings advance our understanding of connectivity patterns in reef ecosystems, thereby informing efforts to design robust marine protected area networks in the face of global change and biodiversity erosion. This deposit contains the command lines, scripts, and analysis files related to Oury et al. Seascape genomics uncovers complex connectivity patterns in reef corals.