Hello! I love your blog, but may I ask a question?
Does speciation through hybridisation ever happen in mammals, because most hybrids I currently know of are
A: Sterile/Infertile
B: Very very unlikely.
Thank you!
Hi there! I had to do a little digging on this myself. I KNOW off the top of my head that penguins have had some natural fertile hybrids, though I don't believe to the degree of complete speciation yet, but those are birds not mammals.
There is a species of bat in the Caribbean that have been theorized through DNA analysis to have speciated through hybridization (Larsen, Marchan-Rivadeneira, & Baker, 2010). Artibeus jamaicensis and A. planirostris (both are species of fruit bats) and a third still unknown species are thought to have led to the species A. schwartzi (Larsen, Marchan-Rivadeneira, & Baker, 2010).
The dolphin species Stenella clymene also has shown evidence to have arisen through natural hybridization from the species of S. coerueloalba and S. longisrostris (Amaral et al, 2014).
So albeit rare or under researched, speciation through hybridization DOES happen in mammals! I will say though that you will find hybrids from diploid (2 copies of chromosomes) species less common than in polyploid (more than 2 copies of chromosomes) species, since in polyploid there is more room for mutations and still having enough copies of needed DNA to be functional.
References:
Larsen, P. A., Marchan-Rivadeneira, M. R., & Baker, R. J. (2010). Natural hybridization generates mammalian lineage with species characteristics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(25), 11447–11452. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1000133107
Amaral, A. R., Lovewell, G., Coelho, M. M., Amato, G., & Rosenbaum, H. C. (2014). Hybrid Speciation in a Marine Mammal: The Clymene Dolphin (Stenella clymene). PLoS ONE, 9(1), e83645. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083645
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