Nearly unbiased estimator of contemporary effective mother size using within-cohort maternal sibling pairs incorporating parental and nonparental reproductive variations.

ABSTRACT: In this study, we developed a nearly unbiased estimator of contemporary effective mother size in a population, which is based on a known maternal half-sibling relationship found within the same cohort. Our method allows for variance of the average number of offspring per mother (i.e., parental variation, such as age-specific fecundity) and variance of the number of offspring among mothers with identical reproductive potential (i.e., nonparental variation, such as family-correlated survivorship). We also developed estimators of the variance and coefficient of variation of contemporary effective mother size and qualitatively evaluated the performance of the estimators by running an individual-based model. Our results provide guidance for (i) a sample size to ensure the required accuracy and

SUBMITTER: Akita T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6972959 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature