Linking behavioural and landscape ecology of hybridization in mammals

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The rapid pace of contemporary climate change means that we may be entering an era of rapid adaptation due to intense natural selection. Interspecific hybridization is often considered to be a consequence of climate change, but it is also potentially an important source of rapid adaptation. This is because hybridization is a relatively fast way to arrive at new combinations of genes, which may then produce novel traits in organisms. Under appropriate environmental conditions, these novel traits may then persist in the population if they confer a fitness advantage. My research program involves testing predictions about animal behaviours that lead to interspecific hybridization, and then assessing large-scale consequences of these behaviours on the genetic structure of populations. My colleagues and I have observed hybridization between northern and southern flying squirrels in a contact zone that has recently emerged between these species in Ontario due to range expansion by the southern species. We think that hybridization between flying squirrel species is promoted by the behavioural need to huddle (or socially thermoregulate) in winter, since mating occurs in late winter while squirrels are still thermally stressed. If squirrels of both species huddle together, that could lead to the hybridization we have observed in the contact zone. We will carry out observational studies and experiments to test the hypothesis that northern and southern flying squirrels will socially thermoregulate together. We will then carry out analyses of large-scale genetic structure to assess the distribution, genetic, and morphological structure of hybrid flying squirrels.