title: Merging scleractinian genera: the overwhelming genetic similarity between solitary Desmophyllum and colonial Lophelia.
abstract: In recent years, several types of molecular markers and new microscale skeletal characters have shown potential as powerful tools for phylogenetic reconstructions and higher-level taxonomy of scleractinian corals. Nonetheless, discrimination of closely related taxa is still highly controversial in scleractinian coral research. Here we used newly sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes and 30 microsatellites to define the genetic divergence between two closely related azooxanthellate taxa of the family Caryophylliidae: solitary Desmophyllum dianthus and colonial Lophelia pertusa.
  
  
  
  In the mitochondrial control region, an astonishing 99.8 % of nucleotides between L. pertusa and D. dianthus were identical. Variability of the mitochondrial genomes of the two species is represented by only 12 non-synonymous out of 19 total nucleotide substitutions. Microsatellite sequence (37 loci) analysis of L. pertusa and D. dianthus showed genetic similarity is about 97 %. Our results also indicated that L. pertusa and D. dianthus show high skeletal plasticity in corallum shape and similarity in skeletal ontogeny, micromorphological (septal and wall granulations) and microstructural characters (arrangement of rapid accretion deposits, thickening deposits).
  
  
  
  Molecularly and morphologically, the solitary Desmophyllum and the dendroid Lophelia appear to be significantly more similar to each other than other unambiguous coral genera analysed to date. This consequently leads to ascribe both taxa under the generic name Desmophyllum (priority by date of publication). Findings of this study demonstrate that coloniality may not be a robust taxonomic character in scleractinian corals.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC), José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Anna Maria
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Addamo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Ambiente e del Territorio e di Scienze della Terra, Università di Milano Bicocca (UNIMIB), Piazza della Scienza 4, 20126, Milan, Italy.|Department of Geology Renard Centre of Marine Geology, Universiteit Ghent, Krijgslaan 281, B-9000, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Agostina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vertino
authors.affiliation: Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Instytut Paleobiologii, Twarda 51/55, PL-00-818, Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Jaroslaw
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stolarski
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC), José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Ricardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: García-Jiménez
authors.affiliation: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR), Via Gobetti 101, 40129, Bologna, Italy.|Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 266 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole, 02543, MA, USA.|Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, 80121, Naples, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Taviani
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC), José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain. annie@mncn.csic.es.
authors.forename: Annie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Machordom
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D037421:Anthozoa / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D054629:Genome, Mitochondrial; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
keywords: Desmophyllum dianthus; Genetic divergence; Lophelia pertusa; Microsatellites; Mitochondrial genome; Skeletal plasticity