Complex population history affects admixture analyses in nine‐spined sticklebacks

Introgressive hybridization is an important process in evolution but challenging to identify, undermining the efforts to understand its role and significance. On the contrary, many analytical methods assume direct descent from a single common ancestor, and admixture among populations can violate their assumptions and lead to seriously biased results. A detailed analysis of 888 whole‐genome sequences of nine‐spined sticklebacks (Pungitius pungitius) revealed a complex pattern of population ancestry involving multiple waves of gene flow and introgression across northern Europe. The two recognized lineages were found to have drastically different histories, and their secondary contact zone was wider than anticipated, displaying a smooth gradient of foreign ancestry with some curious deviations from the expected pattern. Interestingly, the freshwater isolates provided peeks into the past and helped to understand the intermediate states of evolutionary processes. Our analyses and findings paint a detailed picture of the complex colonization history of northern Europe and provide backdrop against which introgression and its role in evolution can be investigated. However, they also expose the challenges in analyses of admixed populations and demonstrate how hidden admixture and colonization history misleads the estimation of admixture proportions and population split times.