Sarcophyton glaucum is an abundant and well-studied soft coral that produces more than 90 natural products. Previous attempts to exploit these natural products have been complicated by the inconsistency of the suite of natural products found in individual coral specimens. Recently, molecular phylogenetic analysis has shown that S. glaucum is not a single species, but a complex of seven cryptic species with indistinguishable morphology. In order to test whether the difference in species within S. glaucum is responsible for the chemical variation observed, we collected S. glaucum samples in Palau, identified them to cryptic species using molecular phylogenetic analysis, extracted the samples and used LC-MS and GC-MS to obtain chemical profiles, and then performed discriminant analysis on those chemical profiles. We found that discriminant analysis was able to distinguish between two cryptic species based on their chemical makeup.

Identification of cryptic species accounts for the seemingly idiosyncratic secondary metabolism of  <i>Sarcophyton glaucum</i> specimens collected in Palau

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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Identification of cryptic species accounts for the seemingly idiosyncratic secondary metabolism of Sarcophyton glaucum specimens collected in Palau