Potential limits to the benefits of admixture during biological invasion.

ABSTRACT: Species introductions often bring together genetically divergent source populations, resulting in genetic admixture. This geographic reshuffling of diversity has the potential to generate favourable new genetic combinations, facilitating the establishment and invasive spread of introduced populations. Observational support for the superior performance of admixed introductions has been mixed, however, and the broad importance of admixture to invasion questioned. Under most underlying mechanisms, admixture's benefits should be expected to increase with greater divergence among and lower genetic diversity within source populations, though these effects have not been quantified in invaders. We experimentally crossed source populations differing in divergence in the invasive plant Centaurea sol

SUBMITTER: Barker BS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6344275 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature