Can one learn history from the allelic spectrum?

Theor Popul Biol
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

It is well known that the neutral allelic frequency spectrum of a population is affected by the history of population size. A number of authors have used this fact to infer history given observed allele frequency data. We ask whether perfect information concerning the spectrum allows precise recovery of the history, and with an explicit example show that the answer is in the negative. This implies some limitations on how informative allelic spectra can be.

Year of Publication
2008
Journal
Theor Popul Biol
Volume
73
Issue
3
Pages
342-8
Date Published
2008 May
ISSN
1096-0325
URL
DOI
10.1016/j.tpb.2008.01.001
PubMed ID
18321552
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