Estimating Population Growth Rates and Instantaneous Population from Periodized Settlement Data

Estimating recombination rates from population genetic data.

We introduce a new method for estimating recombination rates from population genetic data. The method uses a computationally intensive statistical procedure (importance sampling) to calculate the likelihood under a coalescent-based model. Detailed comparisons of the new algorithm with two existing methods (the importance sampling method of Griffiths and Marjoram and the MCMC method of Kuhner an...

Estimating meiotic gene conversion rates from population genetic data.

Gene conversion plays an important part in shaping genetic diversity in populations, yet estimating the rate at which it occurs is difficult because of the short lengths of DNA involved. We have developed a new statistical approach to estimating gene conversion rates from genetic variation, by extending an existing model for haplotype data in the presence of crossover events. We show, by simula...

Estimating Re ombination Rates from Population Geneti

Estimating multistate transition rates from population distributions

The ability to estimate interstate transition rates (or probabilities) from population distributions has many potential applications in demography. Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) has been used for such estimation, but lacks a meaningful behavioral foundation. Here a new approach, Relative State Attraction (RSA), is advanced. It assumes that states have a greater (or lesser) ability to att...

Estimating Uncertainty in Population Growth Rates: Jackknife vs. Bootstrap Techniques

Although per capita rates of increase (r) have been calculated by population biologists for decades, the inability to estimate uncertainty (variance) associated with r values has until recently precluded statistical comparisons of population growth rates. In this study, we used two computerintensive techniques, Jackknifing and Bootstrapping, to estimate bias, standard errors, and sampling distr...