Two crested newt studies, previously highlighted here and here, support historical hybrid zone movement – movement on the scale of hundreds of kilometers and spanning multiple millennia. Before these crested newt examples, little to no empirical evidence for historical hybrid zone movement was available. Does this mean that crested newt hybrid zones are particularly dynamic? Or has the prevalence of historical hybrid zone movement in other systems simply been overlooked? In a perspective piece in Journal of Biogeography I argue the latter: historical hybrid zone movement is likely to be more common than currently appreciated.

Reference: Wielstra, B. (2019). Historical hybrid zone movement: more pervasive than appreciated? Journal of Biogeography 46(7): 1300-1305.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 655487.