Genetic isolation and plasticity in Montipora dilatata and Hawaiian congeners: Where are the species boundaries? Previously funded National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Species of Concern (SOC) work on Montipora dilatata resolved four distinct genetic groups of Montipora

Previously funded National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Species of Concern (SOC) work on Montipora dilatata resolved four distinct genetic groups of Montipora in Hawaii: I) M. patula/M. verilli, II) M. incrassata, III) M. capitata, and IV) M. dilatata/M. turgescens/M. flabellata, with mitochondrial and nuclear markers capable of resolving ~ 1 MY differences (Forsman et al. 2009). Further work confirmed that these groups are also congruent with finescale morphological features (Forsman et al. 2010). Species within these complexes are difficult to distinguish by molecular or morphological means; they are either newly forming species or within-species morphological variation. The goals of the 2010 project were: 1) to expand on the study of Hawaiian Montipora by including corals surrounding the Hawaiian Archipelago, and 2) to examine phenotypic plasticity of skeletal morphology in Montipora at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) by reciprocal transplant studies.