Introgression
Introgression, also known as introgressive hybridization, in genetics is the transfer of genetic material from one species into the gene pool of another by the repeated backcrossing of an interspecific hybrid with one of its parent species. Introgression is a long-term process, even when artificial; it may take many hybrid generations before significant backcrossing occurs. This process is distinct from most forms of gene flow in that it occurs between two populations of different species, rather than two populations of the same species.
Introgression also differs from simple hybridization. Simple hybridization results in a relatively even mixture; gene and allele frequencies in the first generation will be a uniform mix of two parental species, such as that observed in mules. Introgression, on the other hand, results in a complex, highly variable mixture of genes, and may only involve a minimal percentage of the donor genome.
Definition
Introgression or introgressive hybridization is the incorporation of novel genes or alleles from one taxon into the gene pool of a second, distinct taxon. This introgression is considered 'adaptive' if the genetic transfer results in an overall increase in the recipient taxon's fitness.Ancient introgression events can leave traces of extinct species in present-day genomes, a phenomenon known as ghost introgression.
Examples
Humans
There is strong evidence for the introgression of Neanderthal genes and Denisovan genes into parts of the modern human gene pool.Birds
The Mallard duck is possibly the world's most capable bird to hybridise with other duck species, often to the point of the loss of genetic identity of these species. For example, feral mallard populations have significantly reduced wild populations of the Pacific black duck in New Zealand and Australia through cross-breeding.Butterflies
One important example of introgression has been observed in studies of mimicry in the butterfly genus Heliconius. This genus includes 43 species and many races with different color patterns. Congeners exhibiting overlapping distributions show similar color patterns. The subspecies H. melpomene amaryllis and H. melpomene timareta ssp. nov. overlap in distribution.Using the ABBA/BABA test, some researchers have observed that there is about 2% to 5% introgression between the pair of subspecies. Importantly, the introgression is not random. The researchers saw significant introgression in chromosomes 15 and 18, where important mimicry loci are found. They compared both subspecies with H. melpomene agalope, which is a subspecies near H. melpomene amaryllis in entire genome trees. The result of the analysis was that there is no relation between those two species and H. melpomene agalope in the loci B/D and N/Yb. Moreover, they performed the same analysis with two other species with overlapping distributions, H. timareta florencia and H. melpomene agalope. They demonstrated introgression between the two taxa, especially in the loci B/D and N/Yb.
Finally, they concluded their experiments with sliding-window phylogenetic analyses, estimating different phylogenetic trees depending on the different regions of the loci. When a locus is important in the color pattern expression, there is a close phylogenetic relationship between the species. When the locus is not important in the color pattern expression, the two species are phylogenetically distant because there is no introgression at such loci.