Frasella Paola de Martino Fonseca - The influence of population dynamics on hybridization tests

Home institution and supervisors
Camilo Salazar. U Rosario, Colombia.
Carolina Pardo. U Rosario, Colombia.
María del Rosario Castañeda. U Icesi, Colombia.

Host institution and supervisors
José Cerca and Mark Ravinet. UiO, Norway. 2023-2025.

Project description
Genomic data is changing our understanding of species and their evolutionary origins, highlighting hybridization as a key driver of speciation, ecological diversification, and adaptive variation. However, interpreting the presence and role of hybridization is not always straightforward. Current methods for detecting hybridization can be influenced by factors such as population structure, ghost lineages, and population size. A particularly important yet often overlooked factor is demographic history—such as bottlenecks or founder events—, which could skew the data providing signals that can be mistaken as hybridization signatures or mask the extent of the hybridization event. This project aims to investigate how demographic changes affect hybridization detection using genomic simulations. Specifically, focusing on 1) assessing how the severity of a bottleneck might produce false positives in hybridization tests and 2) evaluating the ability of hybridization tests to detect introgression in populations that have experienced bottleneck events.