CORAL GENETICS RESEARCH

Principle Investigator:

Joel Stake
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Lafayette, LA
jstake@yahoo.com

Collaborator/Advisor:

Dr. Joe Neigel

Background:

Joel is a doctoral student working on the systematics of scleractinian corals, specifically the problematic genera Agaricia and Porites. He has collected specimens from the western Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico and used these to develop novel molecular markers for species discrimination and phylogeny reconstruction. The FGBNMS was a critical location to sample because it is the northern limit for species of Agaricia and Porites in this region.

Research Focus:

Coral genetics of Agaricia and Porites species

Research Summary:

The molecular markers that Joel has developed are non-coding (anonymous) nuclear DNA sequences from the genomes of representative specimens. These sequences are especially useful for systematics because they evolve more rapidly and exhibit less homoplasy than protein-coding or ribosomal sequences. With new data from these markers, he hopes to resolve some of the systematic problems presented by Agaricia and Porites.