Coral triangle partnerships in international research and education: Transforming a biodiversity hotspot into a research and education hotspot

Abstract

The extreme concentration of marine biodiversity in the Coral Triangle has evoked numerous biogeographically hypotheses concerning how such diversity is created, and serious questions as to how it can be maintained. Comparative phylogeography provides a unique and powerful tool with which to test these hypotheses, while simultaneously providing insight into how larval connectivity might be maintained among local populations. After a decade of phylogeographical surveys, a range of patterns for the Coral Triangle is emerging. Broad patterns of connectivity in some species support the notion that planktonic. Larvae have maintained gene flow among distant populations for long periods of time. Other phylogeographic patterns suggest vicariant events resulting from Pleistocene and Pliocene sea level fluctuations, which have, at least occasionally, resulted in speciation. Divergence dates ranging back to the Miocene suggest that changing land configurations may have precipitated an explosion of species diversification. Modern day oceanographic features may also limit larval connectivity among regions of the Coral Triangle. This combination of complex phylogeographic patterns suggests multiple questions that will require an extended collaborative effort to untangle. The US National Science Foundation Partnerships for International Research and Education Coral Triangle Project aims to forge long-term collaborative ties with scientists from countries within this Coral Triangle that will allow this research to be carried out in situ, using the latest methodologies in population genetics and phylogeography.