If there are microsatellites already developed for your species (or for another species within the genus - they often cross amplify) then I would suggest these... Microsats will allow you to distinguish between and within species and populations... They are very common and popular markers, well developed, well used, inexpensive and there's plenty of free software to analyse your data..

Good luck..

hi,

it basically all depends on your primray questions but as Samuel A. Logan pointed out I will first check if some of these genteic markers are available for your targeted species, which should not be a problem for both microsatellite loci and mtDNA. Now you might want to invest more time on how to sample correctly (coral vs symbiot ;-) )... If you are into population genteic structure and try to find the origin of your reef-building coral, I would suggest to focus either on microsatellite or SNPs (although I doubt the latter has been developed for coral). Microsatellite loci exist for Acropora tenuis (Lukoschek et al.1852016) and Acropora millepora(van Oppen et al.2011) for example.

Maybe look at this article:

Asymmetric dispersal is a critical element ofconcordance between biophysical 1dispersal models and spatial genetic structure in Great Barrier Reef corals

Authors: Cynthia Riginos, Karlo Hock, Ambrocio M. A. Matias, Peter J. Mumby, Madeleine J. H. van Oppen, Vimoksalehi Lukoschek.

It might help you.

Hi Radhouan,

Here is a very good review from 2006 that succinctly summarizes past studies that focused on genetics and molecular biology relevant to coral conservation.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.625.186&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The following link is a good example of application of genetics to study coral reef connectivity.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cynthia_Riginos/publication/301352036_Congruent_patterns_of_connectivity_can_inform_management_for_broadcast_spawning_corals_on_the_Great_Barrier_Reef/links/57845d4308aee45b8442f333/Congruent-patterns-of-connectivity-can-inform-management-for-broadcast-spawning-corals-on-the-Great-Barrier-Reef.pdf

I hope these will help you in your studies.

Cheers,

Tomas