Sperm dispersal distances estimated by parentage analysis in a brooding scleractinian coral

Within populations of brooding sessile corals, sperm dispersal constitutes the mechanism by which gametes interact and mating occurs, and forms the first link in the network of processes that determine species-wide connectivity patterns. However, almost nothing is known about sperm dispersal for any internally fertilizing coral. In this study, we conducted a parentage analysis on coral larvae collected from an area of mapped colonies, in order to measure the distance sperm disperses for the first time in a reef-building coral and estimated the mating system characteristics of a recently identified putative cryptic species within the Seriatopora hystrix complex (ShA; Warner et al. 2015). We defined consensus criteria among several replicated methods (COLONY 2.0, Cervus 3.0, MLTR v3.2) to maximize accuracy in paternity assignments. Thirteen progeny arrays indicated that this putative species produces exclusively sexually-derived, primarily outcrossed larvae (mean tm=0.999) in multiple pat...