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 histor..., We used a target capture approach appropriate for historical specimens (RADcap) to collect thousands of restriction-site associated (RAD) loci from 109 bobwhite specimens sampled during the 1850s to the 1960s throughout mainland Cuba, Isla de la Juventud, and source populations in the USA and Mexico. Using phylogenetic, population genetic, and demographic analyses in concert with historical records, we evaluated the three hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the origin of Cuban bobwhites.,