THE HIDDEN SIDE OF INVASIONS: MASSIVE INTROGRESSION BY LOCAL GENES

Despite hundreds of reports involving both plants and animals, the mechanisms underlying introgression remain obscure, even if some form of selection is frequently invoked. Introgression has repeatedly been reported in species that have recently colonized a new habitat, suggesting that demographic processes should be given more attention for understanding the mechanisms of introgression. Here we show by spatially explicit simulations that massive introgression of neutral genes takes place during the invasion of an occupied territory if interbreeding is not severely prevented between the invading and the local species. We also demonstrate that introgression occurs almost exclusively from the local to the…