Using biological invasions to understand rapid adaptation to new environments: a genomic reconstruction of the house sparrow global spread
Invasive species are a source of major biodiversity decline across the globe, due to their alteration of ecosystem structure (Ehrenfeld, 2010). Invasive species threaten 14 percent of critically endangered terrestrial vertebrate species, with critically endangered birds the most affected at 25 percent (Dueñas, Hemming, Roberts, and Diaz-Soltero, 2021). It is now more important than ever to understand the mechanisms by which a species adapts and thrives in a new environment, in the way that some of the most ecologically harmful invasive species have. While a major threat to diversity, biological invasions provide a unique opportunity to study phenomena such as rapid adaptation, parallel evolution, speciation and hybridisation. This will help to gain a stronger understanding of these occurrences in successful biological invasions, which could facilitate management and mitigation strategies for the future (North, McGaughran, and Jiggins, 2021).