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Hybridization As A Stimulus For Adaptation To A Novel Environment, Dylan Robert Dittrich-Reed

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding processes contributing to the origin of novelty, including ecological transitions in resource or habitat use, is fundamental to evolutionary biology. Early geneticists speculated about the sudden appearance of new species via special macromutations, epitomized by Goldschmidt’s infamous “hopeful monster”. Transgressive segregation during hybridization is a more plausible mechanism for producing “monstrous” phenotypes beyond the range of parental populations. Transgressive hybrid phenotypes can be products of epistatic interactions or additive effects of multiple recombined loci. However, the importance of hybridization in the origin of novelty is contested because we do not know how often hybridization enhances the probability of an …