Hybridization and Hybrid Zones

Abstract

Several primate taxa show evidence of natural hybridization, and recent genomic analyses of modern and archaic humans have revealed the prevalence of hybridization during the evolutionary history of our own lineage. Thus interest in understanding how natural hybridization occurs in our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates, has grown rapidly. However, studies of the process and dynamics of hybridization in natural primate hybrid zones remain scarce. This may be due to difficulties associated with sample collection and fieldwork and the need of long‐term studies to properly address the most fundamental questions. Nonetheless, a few natural primate hybrid zones have been studied systematically for a few decades, and studies of others have recently been established. These natural hybrid systems provide a window to understand the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the process of hybridization in socially complex taxa.