Meeting Abstract

P2.44  Sunday, Jan. 5 15:30  Estimating the amount of genetic load in a reef-building coral HEFFNER, K*; CAPPER, R; DAVIES, S; MATZ, M; University of Texas, Austin katharine.heffner@gmail.com

High amount of deleterious mutations existing in a heterozygous state (genetic load) can affect reproductive success, lower the fitness of offspring and dampen the response to selection. Estimating genetic load in corals is therefore important to evaluate their capacity to adapt to the effect of global climate change. To evaluate the frequency of strongly deleterious alleles among heterozygotes in the coral Acropora millepora, we have examined 96 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the larval offspring cohorts of different age, looking for deviations of allele frequencies from the expected values based on parental genotypes. We have observed allele frequency shifts at several SNPs, to the point where an allele was completely eliminated from the larval population. Still, the majority of SNPs did not demonstrate a dramatic signal. Our observations indicate that, although corals do harbor some genetic load, it appears to be relatively low and does not noticeably affect the rate of larval survival.