Data from: An island endemic born out of hybridization between introduced lineages

Humans have profoundly impacted the distribution of plant and animal
species over thousands of years. The most direct example of these effects
is human-mediated movement of individuals, either through translocation of
individuals within their range or the introduction of species to new
habitats. While human involvement may be suspected in species with obvious
range disjunctions, it can be difficult to detect natural versus
human-mediated dispersal events for populations at the edge of a species’
range, and this uncertainty muddles how we understand the evolutionary
history of populations and broad biogeographic patterns. Studies combining
genetic data with archeological, linguistic, and historical evidence have
confirmed prehistoric examples of human-mediated dispersal; however, it is
unclear whether these methods can disentangle recent dispersal events,
such as species translocated by European colonizers during the past 500
years. We use genomic DNA from historical specimens and historical records
to evaluate three hypotheses regarding the timing and origin of Northern
Bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) in Cuba, whose status as an endemic or
introduced population has long been debated. We discovered that bobwhites
from southern Mexico arrived in Cuba between the 12th and 16th centuries,
followed by the subsequent introduction of bobwhites from the southeastern
USA to Cuba between the 18th and 20th centuries. These dates suggest the
introduction of bobwhites to Cuba was human-mediated and concomitant with
Spanish colonial shipping routes between Veracruz, Mexico and Havana, Cuba
during this period. Our results identify endemic Cuban bobwhites as a
genetically distinct population born of hybridization between divergent
introduced lineages.