Investigating hybridization and introgression of the Orange-Vaal yellowfish species

The Orange-Vaal smallmouth yellowfish (Labeobarbus aeneus) and Orange-Vaal largemouth yellowfish (L. kimberleyensis) occur in sympatry for much of their distribution. The two species are different behaviourally, ecologically and morphologically. Despite these differences there have been several reports of potential hybridization events, particularly in man-made environments such as dams. However, previous attempts to determine whether hybridization is occurring between these species using morphology, allozymes and mitochondrial DNA were inconclusive. In this study we sequence samples from both species to resolve whether hybridization is occurring between these species, and simultaneously make use of these data to investigate the applicability of mining mitochondrial signal from NGS data.