Travelling in time with networks: Revealing present day hybridization versus ancestral polymorphism between two species of brown algae, Fucus vesiculosus and F. spiralis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Hybridization or divergence between sympatric sister species provides a natural laboratory to study speciation processes. The shared polymorphism in sister species may either be ancestral or derive from hybridization, and the accuracy of analytic methods used thus far to derive convincing evidence for the occurrence of present day hybridization is largely debated.

Results

Here we propose the application of network analysis to test for the occurrence of present day hybridization between the two species of brown algae Fucus spiralis and F. vesiculosus. Individual-centered networks were analyzed on the basis of microsatellite genotypes from North Africa to the Pacific American coast, through the North Atlantic. Two genetic distances integrating different time steps w

SUBMITTER: Moalic Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3040711 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature