A stabilized hybrid form of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and the Spanish sparrow (P. hispaniolensis) is known as Passer italiae from the Italian Peninsula and a few Mediterranean islands. The growing attention for the Italian hybrid sparrow and increasing knowledge on its biology and genetic constitution greatly contrast the complete lack of knowledge of the long‐known phenotypical hybrid sparrow populations from North Africa. Our study provides new data on the breeding biology and variation of mitochondrial DNA in three Algerian populations of house sparrows, Spanish sparrows, and phenotypical hybrids. In two field seasons, the two species occupied different breeding habitats: Spanish sparrows were only found in rural areas outside the cities and bred in open‐cup nests built in large jujube bushes. In contrast, house sparrows bred only in the town centers and occupied nesting holes in walls of buildings. Phenotypical hybrids were always associated with house sparrow populations. House sparrows and phenotypical hybrids started breeding mid of March, and most pairs had three successive clutches, whereas Spanish sparrows started breeding almost one month later and had only two successive clutches. Mitochondrial introgression is strongly asymmetric because about 75% of the rural Spanish sparrow population carried house sparrow haplotypes. In contrast, populations of the Italian hybrid form, P. italiae, were genetically least diverse among all study populations and showed a near‐fixation of house sparrow haplotypes that elsewhere were extremely rare or that were even unique for the Italian Peninsula. Such differences between mitochondrial gene pools of Italian and North African hybrid sparrow populations provide first evidence that different demographic histories have shaped the extant genetic diversity observed on both continents.

Under different environmental conditions, hybridization between the same species might result in different patterns of genetic admixture. Particularly, species pairs with large distribution ranges and long evolutionary history may have experienced several independent hybridization events over time in different zones of overlap. In birds, the diverse hybrid populations of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and the Spanish sparrow (Passer hispaniolensis) provide a striking example. Throughout their range of sympatry, these two species do not regularly interbreed; however, a stabilized hybrid form (Passer italiae) exists on the Italian Peninsula and on several Mediterranean islands. The spatial distribution pattern on the Eurasian continent strongly contrasts the situation in North Africa, where house sparrows and Spanish sparrows occur in close vicinity of phenotypically intermediate populations across a broad mosaic hybrid zone. In this study, we investigate patterns of divergence and admixture among the two parental species, stabilized and nonstabilized hybrid populations in Italy and Algeria based on a mitochondrial marker, a sex chromosomal marker, and 12 microsatellite loci. In Algeria, despite strong spatial and temporal separation of urban early‐breeding house sparrows and hybrids and rural late‐breeding Spanish sparrows, we found strong genetic admixture of mitochondrial and nuclear markers across all study populations and phenotypes. That pattern of admixture in the North African hybrid zone is strikingly different from i) the Iberian area of sympatry where we observed only weak asymmetrical introgression of Spanish sparrow nuclear alleles into local house sparrow populations and ii) the very homogenous Italian sparrow population where the mitogenome of one parent (P. domesticus) and the Z‐chromosomal marker of the other parent (P. hispaniolensis) are fixed. The North African sparrow hybrids provide a further example of enhanced hybridization along with recent urbanization and anthropogenic land‐use changes in a mosaic landscape.