Digest: Frequent hybridization in Darevskia rarely leads to the evolution of asexuality

Abstract

Asexuality in vertebrates is often generated via hybridization, but is it a rare product of pervasive hybridization or a common product of rare hybridization? Freitas et al. show that hybridization is frequent among the sexual species of Darevskia, although the crossings between parents of the asexual hybrids are undetected. This study illustrates that hybridization is not extraordinary in nature, and thus scalable phylogenetic network inference methods, rather than phylogenetic trees, are needed to accurately represent the true evolutionary history.