File:Figure1 Potential evolutionary outcomes of hybridization.jpg

English: Figure 1. Potential evolutionary outcomes of hybridization. While most hybridization events are evolutionary dead ends, hybridization may also lead to speciation reversal where two taxa merge into one or form a hybrid zone between parapatric taxa. When one or few heterospecific alleles are advantageous these can also introgress into one of the parent species’ genomes through repeated backcrossing. Finally, hybrids may form novel lineages that are reproductively isolated from both parent taxa. The coloured fractions of the bars in the bar plots below show the relative proportion of the genome belonging to the blue and green parental lineages respectively. The grey bars represent a speciation reversal where differences are selected against.