hybrid

hybrid
1. An individual plant or animal resulting from a cross between parents of differing genotypes. Strictly, most individuals in an outbreeding population are hybrids, but the term is more usually reserved for cases in which the parents are individuals whose genomes are sufficiently distinct for them to be recognized as different species or subspecies. Good examples include the mule, produced by cross-breeding an ass and a horse (each of which can breed true as a species) and Spartina townsendii, produced by cross-breeding Spartina maritima (British cord grass) and the North American species Spartina alterniflora (each of which can breed true as a species). Hybrids may be fertile or sterile, depending on qualitative and/or quantitative differences in the genomes of the two parents. Hybrids like Spartina townsendii, whose parents are of different species, are sterile but generally reproduce vegetatively.

2. By analogy with (1), any heterozygote. Each heterozygote represents dissimilar alleles at a given locus, and this difference results from a cross between parental gametes possessing differing alleles at that locus.

3. (graft hybrid) See graft.