Biodiversity and biogeography of zooxanthellate soft corals across the Indo-Pacific.

ABSTRACT: Documentation of biodiversity and its geographical distribution is necessary to understand the processes and drivers of evolutionary diversification as well as to guide conservation and management initiatives. Among the most emblematic patterns of biodiversity in the world's oceans is the Coral Triangle (Indo-Australian Archipelago), widely recognized to be the center of species richness for a variety of marine life forms. The distribution of biodiversity remains incompletely documented, however, for a majority of reef-associated invertebrate taxa, including the zooxanthellate soft corals (Octocorallia) that dominate hard substrate on many Indo-Pacific reefs. We used a genetic approach to document the diversity of Indo-Pacific soft corals, sequencing two single-locus barcoding markers for 

SUBMITTER: McFadden CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12048517 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature