Estimating the impact of divergent mating phenology between residents and migrants on the potential for gene flow

Gene flow between populations can allow the spread of beneficial alleles and genetic diversity between populations, with importance to conservation, invasion biology, and agriculture. Levels of gene flow between populations vary not only with distance, but also with divergence in reproductive phenology. Since phenology is often locally adapted, arriving migrants may be reproductively out of synch with residents, which can depress realized gene flow. In flowering plants, the potential impact of phenological divergence on hybridization between populations can be predicted from overlap in flowering schedules—the daily count of flowers capable of pollen exchange—between a resident and migrant population. The accuracy of this prospective hybridization estimate, based on parental phenotypes, rests upon the assumptions of unbiased pollen transfer between resident and migrant active flowers. We tested the impact of phenological divergence on resident–migrant mating frequencies in experiments th...

种群间的基因流（gene flow）可推动有益等位基因（allele）与遗传多样性在种群间扩散，这对保护生物学（conservation biology）、入侵生物学（invasion biology）及农业领域均具有重要价值。种群间的基因流水平不仅随地理距离发生变化，同时也会随繁殖物候（reproductive phenology）的分化产生差异。由于物候通常具有本地适应性，迁入的外来个体可能与本地种群在繁殖时间上不同步，进而抑制实际发生的基因流。对于显花植物（flowering plants）而言，种群间物候分化对杂交（hybridization）的潜在影响，可通过本地种群与迁入种群的开花物候重叠度——即每日可进行花粉交流（pollen exchange）的花朵数量——进行预测。该基于亲本表型（parental phenotypes）的前瞻性杂交评估的准确性，依赖于一项假设：本地种群与迁入种群的活性花朵之间的花粉传递（pollen transfer）不存在偏差。我们通过实验探究了物候分化对本地-迁入种群交配频率的影响，相关实验的……