Landscape and Climatic Variations Shaped Secondary Contacts amid Barn Owls of the Western Palearctic.

ABSTRACT: The combined actions of climatic variations and landscape barriers shape the history of natural populations. When organisms follow their shifting niches, obstacles in the landscape can lead to the splitting of populations, on which evolution will then act independently. When two such populations are reunited, secondary contact occurs in a broad range of admixture patterns, from narrow hybrid zones to the complete dissolution of lineages. A previous study suggested that barn owls colonized the Western Palearctic after the last glaciation in a ring-like fashion around the Mediterranean Sea, and conjectured an admixture zone in the Balkans. Here, we take advantage of whole-genome sequences of 94 individuals across the Western Palearctic to reveal the complex history of the species in the regi

SUBMITTER: Cumer T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8789042 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature