Population Genomics of Giant Mice from the Faroe Islands: Hybridization, Colonization, and a Novel Challenge to Identifying Genomic Targets of Selection.

ABSTRACT: Populations that colonize islands provide unique insights into demography, adaptation, and the spread of invasive species. House mice on the Faroe Islands evolved exceptionally large bodies after colonization, generating longstanding interest from biologists. To reconstruct the evolutionary history of these mice, we sequenced genomes of population samples from three Faroe Islands (Sandoy, Nólsoy, and Mykines) and Norway as a mainland comparison. Mice from the Faroe Islands are hybrids between the subspecies Mus musculus domesticus and M. m. musculus, with ancestry alternating along the genome. Analyses based on the site frequency spectrum of single nucleotide polymorphisms and the ancestral recombination graph (ARG) indicate that mice arrived on the Faroe Islands on a timescale consistent

SUBMITTER: Payseur BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12342764 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature