Locus-specific introgression in young hybrid swarms: drift dominates selection

Abstract

Closely related species that have previously inhabited geographically separated ranges are hybridizing at an increasing rate due to human disruptions. These anthropogenic hybrid zones can be used to study reproductive isolation between species at secondary contact, including examining locus-specific rates of introgression. Introgression is expected to be heterogenous across the genome, reflecting variation in selection. Those loci that introgress especially slowly are good candidates for being involved in reproductive isolation, while those loci that introgress quickly may be involved in adaptive introgression. In the context of conservation, policy makers are especially concerned about introduced alleles moving quickly into the background of a native or endemic species, as these alleles could replace the native alleles in the population, leading to extinction via hybridization. We applied genomic cline analyses to 44997 SNPs to identify loci introgressing at excessive rates when compared to the genome wide expectation in an anthropogenic hybridizing population of red deer and sika in Kintyre Scotland. We found 11.4% of SNPs had cline centers that were significantly different from the genome wide expectation, and 17.6% had excessive rates of introgression. Based on simulations, we believe that many of these markers have diverged from average due to drift, rather than because of selection. Future work could determine the policy implications of allelic-replacement due to drift rather than selection, and could use replicate, geographically distinct hybrid zones to narrow down those loci that are indeed responding to selection in anthropogenic hybrid zones.