Systematics & Species Delimitation of the Clownfish-Hosting Sea Anemones

Symbioses with fully disentangled systematics provide powerful research frameworks for evaluating fundamental biological processes, yet until now, no major, modern (post-1980’s) effort has focused on the systematics and evolution of tropical sea anemones. Further, the clownfish-sea anemone symbiosis has been used as a model mutualism for exploring fundamental biological processes. However, the 10 nominally described species of host anemones have only been described morphologically. The presence of cryptic host anemone taxa thus holds the potential to transform our evolutionary understanding of this symbiosis and bear on the interpretation of dozens of studies that span scientific disciplines. Using newly developed bait-capture probes targeting Ultra Conserved Elements we are using range-wide sampling and genomic species delimitation approaches to disentangle the true species level diversity of the host anemones. This work is currently funded by the National Science Foundation.​

Figure 1. Representative images of the 10 nominal clownfish-hosting sea anemones. A) Cryptodendrum adhesivum, B) Entacmaea quadricolori, C) Heteractis aurora, D) Heteractis crispa, E) Heteractis magnifica, F) Heteractis malu, G) Macrodactyla doreensis, H) Stichodactyla gigantea I) Stichodactyla haddoni, J) Stichodactyla mertensii