Morphological ghosts of introgression in Darwin's finch populations.

ABSTRACT: Many species of plants, animals, and microorganisms exchange genes well after the point of evolutionary divergence at which taxonomists recognize them as species. Genomes contain signatures of past gene exchange and, in some cases, they reveal a legacy of lineages that no longer exist. But genomic data are not available for many organisms, and particularly problematic for reconstructing and interpreting evolutionary history are communities that have been depleted by extinctions. For these, morphology may substitute for genes, as exemplified by the history of Darwin's finches on the Galápagos islands of Floreana and San Cristóbal. Darwin and companions collected seven specimens of a uniquely large form of Geospiza magnirostris in 1835. The populations became extinct in the next few d

SUBMITTER: Grant PR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8346875 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature