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    Chimerism in Wild Adult Populations of the Broadcast Spawning Coral Acropora millepora on the Great Barrier Reef

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    Author
    Puill-Stephan, E; Willis, BL; van Herwerden, L; van Oppen, MJH
    Date
    2009-11-04
    Source Title
    PLoS One
    Publisher
    PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
    University of Melbourne Author/s
    van Oppen, Madeleine
    Affiliation
    School of BioSciences
    Metadata
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    Document Type
    Journal Article
    Citations
    Puill-Stephan, E., Willis, B. L., van Herwerden, L. & van Oppen, M. J. H. (2009). Chimerism in Wild Adult Populations of the Broadcast Spawning Coral Acropora millepora on the Great Barrier Reef. PLOS ONE, 4 (11), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007751.
    Access Status
    Open Access
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/11343/257779
    DOI
    10.1371/journal.pone.0007751
    Abstract
    BACKGROUND: Chimeras are organisms containing tissues or cells of two or more genetically distinct individuals, and are known to exist in at least nine phyla of protists, plants, and animals. Although widespread and common in marine invertebrates, the extent of chimerism in wild populations of reef corals is unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The extent of chimerism was explored within two populations of a common coral, Acropora millepora, on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, by using up to 12 polymorphic DNA microsatellite loci. At least 2% and 5% of Magnetic Island and Pelorus Island populations of A. millepora, respectively, were found to be chimeras (3% overall), based on conservative estimates. A slightly less conservative estimate indicated that 5% of colonies in each population were chimeras. These values are likely to be vast underestimates of the true extent of chimerism, as our sampling protocol was restricted to a maximum of eight branches per colony, while most colonies consist of hundreds of branches. Genotypes within chimeric corals showed high relatedness, indicating that genetic similarity is a prerequisite for long-term acceptance of non-self genotypes within coral colonies. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: While some brooding corals have been shown to form genetic chimeras in their early life history stages under experimental conditions, this study provides the first genetic evidence of the occurrence of coral chimeras in the wild and of chimerism in a broadcast spawning species. We hypothesize that chimerism is more widespread in corals than previously thought, and suggest that this has important implications for their resilience, potentially enhancing their capacity to compete for space and respond to stressors such as pathogen infection.

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