Abstract
The heterozygote-excess method is a recently published method for estimating the effective population size (Ne). It is based on the following principle: When the effective number of breeders (Neb) in a population is small, the allele frequencies will (by chance) be different in males and females, which causes an excess of heterozygotes in the progeny with respect to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium expectations. We evaluate the accuracy and precision of the heterozygote-excess method using empirical and simulated data sets from polygamous, polygynous, and monogamous mating systems and by using realistic sample sizes of individuals (15-120) and loci (5-30) with varying levels of polymorphism. The method gave nearly unbiased estimates of Neb under all three mating systems. However, the confidence intervals on the point estimates of Neb were sufficiently small (and hence the heterozygote-excess method useful) only in polygamous and polygynous populations that were produced by <10 effective breeders, unless samples included > approximately 60 individuals and 20 multiallelic loci.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (110.8 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Hill W. G. Estimation of linkage disequilibrium in randomly mating populations. Heredity (Edinb) 1974 Oct;33(2):229–239. doi: 10.1038/hdy.1974.89. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Luikart G., Allendorf F. W., Cornuet J. M., Sherwin W. B. Distortion of allele frequency distributions provides a test for recent population bottlenecks. J Hered. 1998 May-Jun;89(3):238–247. doi: 10.1093/jhered/89.3.238. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Pudovkin A. I., Zaykin D. V., Hedgecock D. On the potential for estimating the effective number of breeders from heterozygote-excess in progeny. Genetics. 1996 Sep;144(1):383–387. doi: 10.1093/genetics/144.1.383. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Selander R. K. Behavior and genetic variation in natural populations. Am Zool. 1970 Feb;10(1):53–66. doi: 10.1093/icb/10.1.53. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Waples R. S. A generalized approach for estimating effective population size from temporal changes in allele frequency. Genetics. 1989 Feb;121(2):379–391. doi: 10.1093/genetics/121.2.379. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]