Ilian Velikov wrote:I'm very glad to have helped no matter how little my contribution was but unfortunately for the non-professionals like me it is rather hard to understand what the results are of the study. Would be great if someone could summerize it in layman terms...
I'll try, but I have still to dig into all details myself (some of which are also to me like reading Chinese).
They looked at two contact zones between subgroups that already came in sight in Kindler et al. (2013). When dealing with subspecies, you would normally see a gradual transition (in genes and, more often than not, morphology) with a large transition zone of mixing. In this case, however, the transition is sharp (see left side in Fig. 5). This indicates that not a lot of individuals and genes are being exchanged across that border = not interbreeding an awful lot. So, the variation is not clinal but discrete. This case shows less hybridisation than the crested newts in the Balkans, which have been accepted as species for quite some time now.
I must say I was very surprised about this, but I accept it. Minor remarks are that I don't understand why the subspecies gotlandica, schweizeri and corsa are still maintained (whereas they were questioned in 2013) and that I would like to know what's going on at the contact areas around NE Netherlands and NE Italy / Slovenia.