Lophelia pertusa corals from the Ionian and Barents seas share identical nuclear ITS2 and near-identical mitochondrial genome sequences

摘要

BackgroundLophelia pertusa is a keystone cold-water coral species with a widespread distribution. Due to the lack of a mitochondrial marker variable enough for intraspecific analyses, the population structure of this species has only been studied using ITS and microsatellites so far. We therefore decided to sequence and compare complete mitochondrial genomes from two distant L. pertusa populations putatively isolated from each other (in the Barents Sea off Norway and in the Mediterranean Sea off Italy) in the hope of finding regions variable enough for population genetic and phylogeographic studies.