Extensive mitochondrial heteroplasmy in hybrid water frog (Pelophylax spp.) populations from Southeast Europe

Water frogs of the genus Pelophylax (previous Rana) species have been much studied in Europe for their outstanding reproductive mechanism in which sympatric hybridization between genetically distinct parental species produces diverse genetic forms of viable hybrid animals. The most common hybrid is P. esculentus that carries the genomes of both parental species, P. ridibundus and P. lessonae, but usually transfers the whole genome of only one parent to its offsprings (hybridogenesis). The evolutionary cost of transfer of the intact genome and hence the hemiclonal reproduction is the depletion of heterozygosity in the hybrid populations. Pelophylax esculentus presents an excellent example of the long‐term sustained hybridization and hemiclonal reproduction in which the effects of the low genetic diversity are balanced through the novel mutations and periodic recombinations. In this study, we analyzed the mitochondrial (mt) and microsatellites DNA variations in hybrid Pelophylax populations from southern parts of the Pannonian Basin and a north–south transect of the Balkan Peninsula, which are home for a variety of Pelophylax genetic lineages. The mtDNA haplotypes found in this study corresponded to P. ridibundus and P. epeiroticus of the Balkan – Anatolian lineage (ridibundus–bedriagae) and to P. lessonae and a divergent lessonae haplotype of the lessonae lineage. The mtDNA genomes showed considerable intraspecific variation and geographic differentiation. The Balkan wide distributed P. ridibundus was found in all studied populations and its nuclear genome, along with either the lessonae or the endemic epeiroticus genome, in all hybrids. An unexpected finding was that the hybrid populations were invariably heteroplasmic, that is, they contained the mtDNA of both parental species. We discussed the possibility that such extensive heteroplasmy is a result of hybridization and it comes from regular leakage of the paternal mtDNA from a sperm of one species that fertilizes eggs of another. In this case, the mechanisms that protect the egg from heterospecific fertilization and further from the presence of sperm mtDNA could become compromised due to their differences and divergence at both, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. The heteroplasmy once retained in the fertilized egg could be transmitted by hybrid backcrossing to the progeny and maintained in a population over generations. The role of interspecies and heteroplasmic hybrid animals due to their genomic diversity and better fitness compare to the parental species might be of the special importance in adaptations to miscellaneous and isolated environments at the Balkan Peninsula.