The role of environmental heterogeneity in maintaining reproductive isolation between hybridizing Passerina (Aves: Cardinalidae) buntings

Abstract

Hybrid zones are useful systems in which to investigate processes important in creating and maintaining biological diversity. As they are often located in ecotones, patterns of environmental heterogeneity may influence hybridization, and may also influence the maintenance of reproductive isolation between hybridizing species. Focusing on the hybrid zone between Passerina amoena (Lazuli Bunting) and Passerina cyanea (Indigo Bunting), located in the eastern Rocky Mountain/western Great Plains ecotone, we examined the relationship between population-pairwise differences in the proportion of hybrids and environmental variation. Models including environmental variables explained more of the variation in hybridization rates across the ecotone than did models that only included the geographic distance between sampling localities as predictor variables (63.9 and 58.9 versus 38.8 and 39.9, depending on how hybridization was quantified). In the models including environmental variables, the amount of rainfall during the warmest quarter had the greatest explanatory power, consistent with a hypothesis that P. cyanea is better adapted to the mesic environments of eastern North America and P. amoena is better adapted to the xeric habitats of western North America. These results suggest that continued reproductive isolation between these species is mediated, at least partially, by differential adaptations to local environmental conditions. Copyright © 2012 Matthew D. Carling and Henri A. Thomassen.