Does hybridization fuel biodiversity? Unravelling the genetic causes of phenotypic diversification in island endemic lizards

One of the most striking features of biodiversity is how unevenly it is distributed.

Particularly fascinating are hyper-diverse clades (e.g., species, genera), in which closely related lineages have very different phenotypes.

Whether or not such clades have a genetic propensity for generating phenotypic novelty and diversity remains poorly understood and controversial.

Here, we will test if a source of exceptional diversification is hybridization, fuelling evolutionary potential by the reassembly of old variants into novel combinations.The dazzling diversity of colour patterns in Balearic wall lizards is a spectacular example of rapid diversification that has puzzled naturalists and evolutionary theorists since the 19th century.

We have recently shown that this clade has a hybrid origin, formed through merging of two distantly related lineages.

This makes the radiation on the Balearic Islands an outstanding candidate to test if admixture fuels evolutionary potential.We will put this hypothesis to the test using high-coverage genome sequencing of 640 wall lizards from 40 populations.

We will establish the evolutionary and demographic history of these populations, genomic patterns of population differentiation and selection, and associations between genotypes and phenotypes.

The results will bring genuine insights into the genomic basis of evolvability and phenotypic novelty, and help to resolve the role of admixture for evolutionary diversification.