11 February 2019
Hybridization models during range expansion have been developed but assume dispersal to be independent from neighboring population densities.
However, organisms may disperse because they are attracted by conspecifics or because they prefer depopulated areas. Here, through spatially explicit simulations, we assess the effect of various density-dependent dispersal modes on the introgression between two species.
Invasive individuals attracted by conspecifics need more time to colonize the whole area and are more introgressed by local genes, while the opposite is found for solitary individuals. We applied our approach to a recent expansion of European wildcats in the Jura Mountains and the hybridization with domestic cats. Using density-dependent dispersal models explained better the observed level of introgression and increase the predictive power of the approach.
