Do divergent mitochondrial backgrounds alter the fate of nuclear alleles during hybridization and admixture?

After 25 generations of experimental evolution in hybrid Drosophila melanogaster, nuclear allele frequencies formed a strikingly parallel mosaic independent of mitochondrial DNA background across 15 populations.

• Why it matters: Mitochondrial–nuclear coevolution could make mitonuclear incompatibilities “hot-spots” that shape how nuclear variation is sorted during hybridization and admixture.
• What they did: Three sets of five hybrid populations were evolved with identical nuclear chromosomes paired to three increasingly divergent mitochondrial DNA backgrounds, and nuclear allele frequencies were tracked by whole-genome sequencing at intermediate time points.
• The result: Rapid genomic evolution produced repeatable ancestry sorting with no evidence that mitochondrial background shaped nuclear admixture, even for interspecific combinations, implying efficient purifying selection limits incompatibility accumulation in large effective population size species.

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