Abstract: Anemone fishes are perhaps amongst the most iconic and well-studied organisms of coral reefs. One notorious adaptation that has evolved in these creatures is their close association with sea anemones. Anemone fishes depend on these anemones throughout most of their life cycle and as such, their persistence is strongly linked to the persistence, population dynamics, and evolution of the anemones in which they live. Despite that our current understanding of gene flow and larval dispersal in anemone fishes has dramatically increased, our knowledge of basic aspects of the biology and population dynamics of their host sea anemones remains limited. In this talk, I will present some of our recent findings that aim to address this gap using molecular tools and a population genetics framework. In particular, I will present recent patterns that have emerged for three of these sea anemone species that are widely distributed across the Indo Pacific Ocean and the Red Sea.

Biography: Pablo Saenz is an assistant professor at the Universidad Austral de Chile. His research combines ecological and genetic approaches to study larval dispersal, population connectivity, and gene flow in marine organisms.