Toews David P L, Baiz Marcella D, Kramer Gunnar R, Lovette Irby J, Streby Henry M, Taylor Scott A
Department of Biology Pennsylvania State University University Park PA USA.
Department of Environmental Sciences University of Toledo Toledo OH USA.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Jun 17;11(15):10720-10723. doi: 10.1002/ece3.7327. eCollection 2021 Aug.
We present comments on an article published by Confer et al. (Ecology and Evolution, 10, 2020). Confer et al. (2020) aggregate data from multiple studies of social pairing between and , two wood warblers in the family Parulidae that hybridize extensively where they co-occur. From analysis of these data, they conclude there is near-complete reproductive isolation between these two species. In our reply, we show that this finding is not supported by other lines of evidence, and significant drawbacks of their study design preclude such strong conclusions. In our critique, we show that (a) coarse-scale plumage classifications cannot be used to accurately estimate hybrid ancestry in ; (b) extra-pair paternity is very high in and is likely facilitating hybridization, yet was not considered by Confer et al. (2020), and we suggest this will have a substantial influence on the interpretation of reproductive isolation in the system; and (c) the central finding of strong total reproductive isolation is not compatible with the results of other long-term studies, which demonstrate low isolation and high gene flow. We conclude with a more comprehensive interpretation of hybridization and reproductive isolation in warblers.
我们对康弗等人发表的一篇文章（《生态与进化》，第10卷，2020年）进行评论。康弗等人（2020年）汇总了多项关于橙胸林莺和黄腰林莺社会配对研究的数据，这两种林莺属于森莺科，在同域分布时广泛杂交。通过对这些数据的分析，他们得出结论，这两个物种之间存在近乎完全的生殖隔离。在我们的回应中，我们表明这一发现并未得到其他证据的支持，而且他们的研究设计存在重大缺陷，无法得出如此强有力的结论。在我们的批评中，我们指出：（a）粗略的羽毛分类不能用于准确估计橙胸林莺的杂交血统；（b）橙胸林莺的婚外父权非常高，这可能促进了杂交，但康弗等人（2020年）并未考虑这一点，我们认为这将对该系统中生殖隔离的解释产生重大影响；（c）关于强烈的总生殖隔离这一核心发现与其他长期研究的结果不一致，其他研究表明隔离程度低且基因流高。我们最后对林莺的杂交和生殖隔离进行了更全面的解读。
