Research overview: adaptive introgression in felid evolution

Beyond confounding phylogenies, introgression can transfer beneficial alleles between species, a process termed adaptive introgression. This overview surveys evidence in cats that gene flow during the big-cat radiation moved variants affecting traits such as vision, coloration, or metabolism between lineages, and how researchers identify introgressed regions that show signatures of positive selection. It discusses the methods used to distinguish adaptive introgression from incomplete lineage sorting and neutral admixture, the conceptual shift from viewing hybridization as purely detrimental to seeing it as a source of evolutionary novelty, and what cats contribute to the broader debate about reticulate evolution in animals.