Female toads engaging in adaptive hybridization prefer high-quality heterospecifics as mates.

Abstract

Hybridization-interbreeding between species-is generally thought to occur randomly between members of two species. Contrary to expectation, female plains spadefoot toads (<i>Spea bombifrons</i>) can increase their evolutionary fitness by preferentially mating with high-quality males of another species, the Mexican spadefoot toad (<i>Spea multiplicata</i>). Aspects of Mexican spadefoot males' mating calls predict their hybrid offspring's fitness, and plains spadefoot females prefer Mexican spadefoot males on the basis of these attributes, but only in populations and ecological conditions where hybridization is adaptive. By selecting fitness-enhancing mates of another species, females increase hybridization's benefits and exert sexual selection across species. Nonrandom mating between species can thereby increase the potential for adaptive gene flow between species so that adaptive introgression is not simply happenstance.