Population Genetics Theory: Another View

Population genetics history: a personal view.

A population genetics view of animal domestication.

The fundamental shift associated with the domestication of plants and animals allowed for a dramatic increase in human population sizes and the emergence of modern society. Despite its importance and the decades of research devoted to studying it, questions regarding the origins and processes of domestication remain. Here, we review recent theoretical advances and present a perspective that und...

Population genetics: Coalescence theory I

To understand inferences based on sampling random relationships among a small sample of individuals of a contemporary population we need to know some basic models of population history. Several such models exist. Fisher (1929, and 1930) and Wright (1931) developed independently a simple population model. We call this model the Wright-Fisher population model. Alternatives are the Moran model, de...

Population genetics: Coalescence theory II

The coalescent is an accumulation of waiting times. We can think of it as standard queuing process where the times are exponentially distributed with rate k(k − 1)/(2 × 2N) [for most elaboration in this chapter I use the Wright-Fisher model as a guide, for the Moran model the rate would be k(k−1)/(2× (2N)2) ]. The coalescent makes no assumptions about the interaction of the intervals, we will a...

Information Theory and Population Genetics

The key findings of classical population genetics are derived using a framework based on information theory using the entropies of the allele frequency distribution as a basis. The common results for drift, mutation, selection, and gene flow will be rewritten both in terms of information theoretic measurements and used to draw the classic conclusions for balance conditions and common features o...