E&E Seminar: Causes and Consequences of Hybridization - from behaviour to evolution

Common wall lizards are one of the most widespread and frequently encountered reptiles in Europe. They span the entire continent from Spain through to Turkey and have even managed to find themselves introduced into areas outside their native range (e.g., the UK). Their phylogeography has been structured by the climatic history of the region, creating a number of distinct evolutionary lineages that not only vary genetically but also show substantial phenotypic variation. These lineages have recently begun to come back into secondary contact as a result of multiple processes providing an outstanding opportunity to study the causes and consequences of genetic exchange. In this talk I plan to provide a broad overview of our research on the wall lizards starting with our initial focus trying to understand how they got to the UK and where they came from to our more recent work trying to disentangle their remarkably reticulated evolution.