Coral research is being ushered into the genomic era. To fully capitalize on the potential discoveries from this genomic revolution, the rapidly increasing number of high-quality genomes requires effective pairing with rigorous taxonomic characterizations of specimens and the contextualization of their ecological relevance. However, to date there is no formal framework that genomicists, taxonomists, and coral scientists can co...

The transition from larva to adult is a critical step in the life history strategy of most marine animals. However, the genetic basis of this life history change remains poorly understood in many taxa, including most coral species. Recent evidence suggests that coral planula larvae undergo significant changes at the physiological and molecular levels throughout the development. To investigate this, we characterized differentia...

Antarctic shallow‐water invertebrates are exceptional candidates to study population genetics and evolution, because of their peculiar evolutionary history and adaptation to extreme habitats that expand and retreat with the ice sheets. Among them, sponges are one of the major components, yet population connectivity of none of their many Antarctic species has been studied. To investigate gene flow, local adaptation and resilien...

Living fossils are survivors of previously more diverse lineages that originated millions of years ago and persisted with little morphological change. Therefore, living fossils are model organisms to study both long‐term and ongoing adaptation and speciation processes. However, many aspects of living fossil evolution and their persistence in the modern world remain unclear. Here, we investigate three major aspects of the evolu...

Coral reefs in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) are among the most isolated in the world. This isolation has resulted in relatively low species diversity but comparatively high endemism. The dominant reef‐building corals of the TEP are the Pocillopora corals, a ubiquitous Indo‐Pacific genus commonly regarded as inferior reef‐builder. In addition to being the dominant reef‐builders in the TEP, the Pocilloporids have undergone...