Can one hear the shape of a population history?

2014/02/11 by Kim, Junhyong, Mossel, Elchanan, Rácz, Miklós Z. +1 · 1 citation
#FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #Statistics Theory (math.ST)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1402.2424

Abstract

Reconstructing past population size from present day genetic data is a major goal of population genetics. Recent empirical studies infer population size history using coalescent-based models applied to a small number of individuals. Here we provide tight bounds on the amount of exact coalescence time data needed to recover the population size history of a single, panmictic population at a certain level of accuracy. In practice, coalescence times are estimated from sequence data and so our lower bounds should be taken as rather conservative.

Cited by

• Site Frequency Spectrum in stationary branching populations

Related

• Exact Limits of Inference in Coalescent Models
• Exact limits of inference in coalescent models
• Demographic inference using genetic data from a single individual: separating population size variation from population structure
• How Many Subpopulations is Too Many? Exponential Lower Bounds for Inferring Population Histories
• Can genomic analysis actually estimate past population size?