Stable species boundaries despite ten million years of hybridization in tropical eels
Julia Barth, Chrysoula Gubili, Michael Matschiner, Ole Tørresen, Shun Watanabe, Bernd Egger, Yu-San Han, Eric Feunteun, Ruben Sommaruga, Robert Jehle & Robert Schabetsberger
Genomic evidence is increasingly underpinning that hybridization between taxa is commonplace, challenging our views on the mechanisms that maintain their boundaries. Here, we focus on seven catadromous eel species (genus Anguilla), and use genome-wide sequence data from more than 450 individuals sampled across the tropical Indo-Pacific, morphological information, and three newly assembled draft genomes to compare contemporary patterns of hybridization with signatures of past gene flow across a time-calibrated phylogeny. We show that the seven...