“…Since 2013, simultaneous dispersal flight events were observed in Florida (Chouvenc et al, 2015(Chouvenc et al, , 2017b) and heterospecific mating behavior were observed, as AST males readily initiated tandem with females of FST (Chouvenc et al, 2015). From such pairings, hybrid colonies from the two possible mating combinations (♀AST × ♂FST and ♀FST × ♂AST) were successfully established in the laboratory, showing that there were no pre-zygotic barriers for the production of a viable F 1 hybrid brood (Chouvenc et al, 2015(Chouvenc et al, , 2017a. Hybrid colonies after 1 year of foundation showed relatively high hybrid vigor by displaying faster colony growth compared to colonies founded with conspecific pairs of FST and AST (Chouvenc et al, 2015).…”