Same places, same stories? Genomics reveals similar structuring and demographic patterns for four Pocillopora coral species in the southwestern Indian Ocean

Aim Efficiently protecting species requires knowing their ecological, life history and reproductive traits. This is particularly decisive for scleractinian corals, key components of coral reefs, which are experiencing critical declines. Yet their connectivity remains insufficiently documented. Here, we focused on four distinct species of the coral genus Pocillopora found in diverse habitats of the southwestern Indian Ocean and presenting various reproductive strategies. We aimed to understand whether these traits affect species connectivity.
Location Archipelagos and islands of the southwestern Indian Ocean.
Taxon Pocillopora spp.
Methods We used target-capture to collect single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from over a thousand colonies sampled across nine localities. From the ca. 1,400 SNPs retained per species, Bayesian clustering methods, networks and demographic inferences were applied to first infer the population genetic structure and connectivity of each species, then the demo..., , , README for data from: Oury N, Mona S, Magalon H (2023) Same places, same stories? Genomics reveals similar structuring and demographic patterns for four Pocillopora coral species in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Journal of Biogeography n/a:1–15. doi: 10.1111/jbi.14788

Available at .

Data included:

1\) Command_line_examples.docx and Command_line_examples.txt contain examples of the command lines used for reads processing and population structure analyses in Oury et al. (2023 - J Biogeogr). These are provided in two different formats for compatibility reasons.

2\) DB_FAMD.txt contains the data for the FAMD (one line for each pair of conspecific populations).

Column details:

```
- Species: Pocillopora species for populations 1 & 2
- Cluster1, Cluster2: Cluster for populations 1 & 2
- Comp: Type of comparison (intra-cluster vs. inter-cluster)
- CompxCluster = column Cluster1 vs. column Cluster2
- Pop1, Pop2: populations 1 & 2
- Dist: Distance at sea (in km) between popula...