Data from: DNA barcoding reveals the coral “laboratory-rat”, Stylophora pistillata encompasses multiple identities

Stylophora pistillata is a widely used coral “lab-rat” species with highly variable morphology and a broad biogeographic range (Red Sea to western central Pacific). Here we show, by analysing Cytochorme Oxidase I sequences, from 241 samples across this range, that this taxon in fact comprises four deeply divergent clades corresponding to the Pacific-Western Australia, Chagos-Madagascar-South Africa, Gulf of Aden-Zanzibar- Madagascar, and Red Sea-Persian/Arabian Gulf-Kenya. On the basis of the fossil record of Stylophora, these four clades diverged from one another 51.5-29.6 Mya, i.e., long before the closure of the Tethyan connection between the tropical Indo-West Pacific and Atlantic in the early Miocene (16–24 Mya) and should be recognised as four distinct species. These findings have implications for comparative ecological and/or physiological studies carried out using Stylophora pistillata as a model species, and highlight the fact that phenotypic plasticity, thought to be common in scleractinian corals, can mask significant genetic variation.Stylophora pistillata（鹿角杯形珊瑚）是一种被广泛用作实验研究对象的珊瑚模式物种，其形态具有高度可变性，生物地理分布范围极广，从红海延伸至中太平洋西部。本研究对该分布范围内241份样本的细胞色素氧化酶I（Cytochrome Oxidase I）序列进行分析后发现，该分类群实际上包含4个深度分化的演化支，分别对应太平洋-西澳大利亚、查戈斯-马达加斯加-南非、亚丁湾-桑给巴尔-马达加斯加以及红海-波斯湾/阿拉伯湾-肯尼亚四个地理区系。基于杯形珊瑚属（Stylophora）的化石记录，这4个演化支的分化时间为5150万至2960万年前，远早于中新世早期（1600万至2400万年前）印太热带海域与大西洋之间的特提斯洋连接通道闭合时间，因此应将其认定为4个独立物种。上述研究结果对以鹿角杯形珊瑚作为模式物种开展的比较生态学和/或生理学研究具有重要启示意义，同时也凸显了此前被认为在石珊瑚中普遍存在的表型可塑性能够掩盖显著遗传分化这一事实。