The doubly conditioned frequency spectrum does not distinguish between ancient population structure and hybridization.

ABSTRACT: Distinguishing between hybridization and population structure in the ancestral species is a key challenge in our understanding of how permeable species boundaries are to gene flow. The doubly conditioned frequency spectrum (dcfs) has been argued to be a powerful metric to discriminate between these two explanations, and it was used to argue for hybridization between Neandertal and anatomically modern humans. The shape of the observed dcfs for these two species cannot be reproduced by a model that represents ancient population structure in Africa with two populations, while adding hybridization produces realistic shapes. In this letter, we show that this result is a consequence of the spatial coarseness of the demographic model and that a spatially structured stepping stone model can genera

SUBMITTER: Eriksson A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4032131 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature