Palau suffered massive mortality of reef corals during the 1998 mass bleaching, and understanding recovery from that catastrophic loss is critical to management for future impacts. Many reef species have shown significant genetic structure at small scales while apparently absent at large scales, a pattern often referred to as chaotic genetic patchiness. Here we use hierarchical sampling of population structure scored from a panel of microsatellite markers for the coral Acropora hyacinthus across the islands of Yap, Ngulu and Palau to evaluate hypotheses about the mechanisms of previously described chaotic genetic structure. As with previous studies, we find no isolation-by-distance within or between the three islands and high genetic structure between sites separated by as little as ~ 10 km on Palau. Using kinship among individual colonies, however, we find higher mean pairwise relatedness coefficients among individuals within sampling sites. Comparing population structure among hierarchical sampling scales, we show that the pattern of chaotic genetic patchiness reported previously appears to derive from genetic patches of local kin groups at small spatial scales. Genetic distinction of Palau from neighboring islands and high kinship among individuals within these kinship neighborhoods implies that the coral reefs of Palau apparently recovered through a mosaic of rare thermally tolerant colonies that survived the 1998 mass bleaching and are now spreading and recolonizing reefs as local kin groups. This pattern of recovery on Palau gives us a better understanding for effective coral reef conservation strategies in which protecting these rare survivors wherever they occur, rather than specific areas of reef habitat, is critical to increase coral reef resilience.

中文翻译：

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帕劳风信子的漂白后恢复是否通过当地亲属群体的传播？

帕劳在 1998 年大规模白化期间遭受了珊瑚礁的大量死亡，了解从灾难性损失中恢复对于未来影响的管理至关重要。许多珊瑚礁物种在小尺度上显示出显着的遗传结构，而在大尺度上显然不存在，这种模式通常被称为混沌遗传斑块。在这里，我们使用从雅浦岛、恩古鲁岛和帕劳岛的风信子珊瑚的一组微卫星标记中获得的种群结构分层抽样来评估关于先前描述的混沌遗传结构机制的假设。与之前的研究一样，我们发现三个岛屿内部或之间没有距离隔离，并且在帕劳仅相距约 10 公里的地点之间没有高遗传结构。利用各个殖民地之间的血缘关系，然而，我们发现采样点内个体之间的平均成对相关系数更高。比较分层抽样尺度之间的种群结构，我们发现先前报道的混沌遗传斑块模式似乎源自小空间尺度的本地亲属群体的遗传斑块。帕劳与邻近岛屿的遗传差异以及这些亲属社区内个体之间的高度亲属关系意味着帕劳的珊瑚礁显然是通过罕见的耐热菌落马赛克恢复的，这些菌落在 1998 年大规模白化中幸存下来，现在作为当地亲属群体正在扩展和重新殖民珊瑚礁. 帕劳的这种恢复模式让我们更好地了解有效的珊瑚礁保护策略，在这些策略中保护这些稀有幸存者，无论它们在哪里