Estimation of effective population size in continuously distributed populations: there goes the neighborhood.

ABSTRACT: Use of genetic methods to estimate effective population size (Ne) is rapidly increasing, but all approaches make simplifying assumptions unlikely to be met in real populations. In particular, all assume a single, unstructured population, and none has been evaluated for use with continuously distributed species. We simulated continuous populations with local mating structure, as envisioned by Wright's concept of neighborhood size (NS), and evaluated performance of a single-sample estimator based on linkage disequilibrium (LD), which provides an estimate of the effective number of parents that produced the sample (Nb). Results illustrate the interacting effects of two phenomena, drift and mixture, that contribute to LD. Samples from areas equal to or smaller than a breeding window produced e

SUBMITTER: Neel MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3746818 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature