Abstract
In rapidly changing environments species conservation can be hindered by uncertainties in distinguishing closely related species. Cryptic ongoing hybridization can add further uncertainty and could be beneficial or destructive. Here, we show that a declining birch tree species is hybridizing with a more widespread relative in the Junggar basin, NW China, and their hybrids have been previously named as rare sub‐species. Given the declining numbers of this birch tree, we suggest that conservation effort should aim to slow the rate of anthropogenic habitat loss at this hybrid zone and preserve its pure populations away from the hybrid zone.
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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States
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© 2021 The Author/s, Plants, People, Planet. New Phytologist Foundation