RESEARCH ARTICLE Experimental Crossing of Two Distinct Species of Leopard Geckos, Eublepharis angramainyu and E. macularius: Viability, Fertility and Phenotypic Variation of the Hybrids Jitka Jančúchová-Lásková, Eva Landová, Daniel Frynta* Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic *
[email protected] Abstract OPEN ACCESS Hybridization between distinct species of animals and subsequent genetic introgression Citation: Jančúchová-Lásková J, Landová E, Frynta plays a considerable role in the speciation process and the emergence of adaptive charac- D (2015) Experimental Crossing of Two Distinct ters. Fitness of between-species hybrids usually sharply decreases with the divergence Species of Leopard Geckos, Eublepharis angramainyu and E. macularius: Viability, Fertility and time of the concerned species and the divergence depth, which still allows for a successful Phenotypic Variation of the Hybrids. PLoS ONE 10 crossing differs among principal clades of vertebrates. Recently, a review of hybridization (12): e0143630. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143630 events among distinct lizard species revealed that lizards belong to vertebrates with a highly Editor: Suzannah Rutherford, Fred Hutchinson developed ability to hybridize. In spite of this, reliable reports of experimental hybridizations Cancer Research Center, UNITED STATES between genetically fairly divergent species are only exceptional. Here, we show the results Received: June 29, 2015 of the crossing of two distinct allopatric species of eyelid geckos possessing temperature Accepted: November 7, 2015 sex determination and lacking sex chromosomes: Eublepharis macularius distributed in Pakistan/Afghanistan area and E. angramainyu, which inhabits Mesopotamia and adjacent Published: December 3, 2015 areas. We demonstrated that F1 hybrids were viable and fertile, and the introgression of E.