Authors
Claudia F Vaga, Alexis M Weinnig, Stephen D Cairns, Michelle L Taylor, Meredith Everett, Santiago Herrera, Erik E Cordes, Andrea M Quattrini, Cheryl L Morrison
Published in
Ecology and evolution. Volume 16. Issue 10. Pages e74485. Epub Oct 16, 2026.
Abstract
Reef-building corals are key contributors in marine ecosystems, from warm, shallow reefs to cold, deep-water habitats worldwide. Desmophyllym pertusum (Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the most important habitat-forming cold-water corals and has long been considered a cosmopolitan species. Yet phylogenetic relationships within the genus, as well as its relatedness to the synonymized genus Lophelia (Milne Edwards & Haime, 1849), remain poorly understood and debated. Here, we use nuclear ultraconserved elements and exons, complete mitochondrial genomes, and single nucleotide polymorphism data to show that populations of D. pertusum in the eastern and central North Pacific Ocean are genetically differentiated from those in the western and eastern Atlantic Ocean. Our results support the previously proposed synonymy of genera Lophelia and Desmophyllum (Ehrenberg, 1834). Morphological features of specimens from the Pacific Ocean, particularly budding pattern and corallite size, match those of the previously synonymized D. californicum comb. nov., which we therefore reinstate. We also incorporated solitary Desmophyllum spp. lineages into phylogenomic analyses, including a multispecies coalescence model. Taken together, these integrative taxonomic results indicate the presence of multiple Desmophyllum species beyond those currently recognized as valid. Future studies could incorporate phylogenomic approaches to better delimit species boundaries and avoid grouping distinct coral species.
PMID:
42891358
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Oct 2026.
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