Quantifying stochastic introgression processes in random environments with hazard rates

Abstract

Introgression is the permanent incorporation of genes from the genome of one population into another. Previous studies have found that stochasticity in number of offspring, hybridisation, and environment are important aspects of introgression risk, but these factors have been studied separately. In this paper we extend the use of the hazard rate which we previously used to studied effects of demographic stochasticity with repeated invasion attempts, to incorporate temporal environmental stochasticity. We find that introgression risk varies much in time, and in some periods it can be much enhanced in such environments. Furthermore, effects of plant life history parameters, such as flowering and survival probabilities, on hazard rates depend on characteristics of the environmental variation.