Estimation of rates of recombination and migration in populations of plant pathogens-a reply.

ABSTRACT We find that the maximum likelihood method proposed by J. K. M. Brown has deficiencies that limit its usefulness for actual data sets. We propose two alternative statistical methods based on maximum likelihood that could be used to quantify rates of recombination and immigration in fungal populations. We also show that minor modification of our original method, which was based upon posterior probabilities, leads to a result that is identical to one of the maximum likelihood methods. Our previous estimates of the relative contributions of sexual reproduction, asexual reproduction, and immigration to the genetic structure of a Mycosphaerella graminicola population did not change significantly following reanalysis of our data with these new methods.