Table 1.
Some parameters in the population genetics of mutations*.
| U | mutation rate per generation per genome; check context for effects of mutations |
| Ge, G | effective haploid genome size (all functional base pairs), total haploid genome size (with neutral sites) |
| μ, μ10, μ01 | mutation rate per locus or per site per generation, away from the preferred base, and back |
| κ, tn/tv | mutational bias: μ10/μ01, transition/transversion ratio |
| re, rco, rgc | effective recombination rate, cross over rate, gene conversion rate |
| s | selection coefficient; measures changes in fitness; check context for exact definitions (homozygous or heterozygous; positive or negative) |
| h | dominance coefficient so that sh is the effect of heterozygous mutations |
| DME (or DFE) | distribution of mutational effects on fitness |
| WA | Wrightian fitness of a genotype A (one of the many ways fitness can be defined) |
| ε | epistasis: interactions of mutational effects. If fitness is multiplicative, ε = WAB − WAWB |
| Ne, N | effective population size, census population size |
| m | migration rate |
| Pfix | probability of fixation of a (mutant) allele |
| Tfix, Tloss | time to fixation, loss in generations |
| KA, KS (or DN, DS) | rate of DNA divergence per site between two species corrected for multiple hits (see context for method); substitutions can be non-synonymous (change amino acids), or synonymous (or silent) (check context) |
| πA, πS, θWA, θWS | DNA diversity within a population per site: π is the average pairwise nucleotide diversity, θW is Watterson's estimate; for explanation of indices see KA, KS |
| D, D′, r2 | measures of linkage disequilibrium (LD) |
| VG | genetic variance in a quantitative trait |
| VM | increment in VG from new mutations per generation |
| VE | environmental variance in a quantitative trait |
*For historical reasons and due to the limitations of the alphabet, several symbols have different meanings in different contexts. Examples: h2 = heritability of a quantitative trait; r = rate of selfing; r = rate of population growth; D = ‘Tajima's D’, where D < 0 may indicate population expansion or directional selection and D > 0 a bottleneck or balancing selection.