Collaborative Research: Gauging Introgression: Variation Across the Genome in Mode and Tempo of Natural Selection in a Tiger Salamander Hybrid Zone

这项研究使用现代大规模分子生物学工具同时解决两个重要问题。首先，它量化了过去350万年来生活在美国不同地区的两种蝾螈之间发生的遗传和生态分化水平。其次，它检查了这两个物种在加州中部杂交的遗传后果。在这种独特的生态环境中，一种本土的联邦濒危物种（加州虎蝾螈，Ambystoma californiense）与一种引进的入侵物种（条纹虎蝾螈，Ambystoma tigrinum）杂交，给加州本土物种增加了新的威胁。这项合作研究工作汇集了在现代基因组技术，野外生态学和保护生物学方面具有巨大优势的研究实验室，试图了解野生杂交如何影响濒危物种，最终目标是了解物种形成如何在这个系统中发生，以及如何管理入侵物种的破坏性影响。 这项工作的广泛影响延伸到保护生物学和濒危物种管理的许多方面。这项工作汇集了学术科学家和联邦政策制定者，探索如何将杂交作为保护遗传学中的一个新问题来处理。

The proposed research uses modern, large-scale molecular biological tools to simultaneously address two important questions. First, it quantifies the level of genetic and ecological differentiation that has occurred between two species of salamanders that have been living in separate regions of the United States for the last 3.5 million years. Second, it examines the genetic consequences of hybridization between these two species in central California. In this unique ecological setting, a native, federally-endangered species (the California tiger salamander, Ambystoma californiense) hybridizes with an introduced, invader species (the barred tiger salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum), adding a critical new threat to the California native species. This collaborative research effort brings together research laboratories with great strengths in modern genomic techniques, field ecology, and conservation biology to attempt to understand how hybridization in the wild effects an endangered species, with an ultimate goal of understanding how speciation has occurred in this system, and how to manage the devastating effects of an invasive species. The broader impacts of this work extend into many aspects of conservation biology and endangered species management. The work brings together academic scientists with federal policy makers to explore the ways in which hybridization can be dealt with as an emerging problem in conservation genetics.