Burgermeister, Most hybridization is caused by intervention of homosapiens- not by evolution. Yes, there are alot of the Hybrids that have faster growth rates than the pure strain BG, but that wasn't my main arguement.
Intersting, we have had some natural hybridization in our pond with pure strain BG's and a Green Sunfish. The neighbors hired hand used to seine some green sunnies out of a nearby creek to use for bait for fishing our pond. At least one green sunnies survived to breed in our pond. The hybrids looked very similar to a pumkinseeds and grew large, I caught a number of them in the 9-1/2 to 10" range, I even took one to our Game & Parks dept. thinking it was a NE state record pumkinseed, it exceeded the current record by an ounce an a half. Anyway they had to have a specialist at UNL look at it and count the gill rakes to determine if it was a hybrid or not, and it was. Anyway, we had a copper sulfate related oxygen sag one year and that was the end to all of the BG/GS hybrids, they just didn't handle the stress as well the pure strain BG's. As a side note that one green sunny was caught and removed from our pond.
