Table 1.

Prior distributions for model parameters. For each parameter, the uniform distribution from which simulated parameter values are drawn is given, along with a biological explanation for the bounds of the distribution

Parameter	Prior	Explanation
θ S	U(0.01 – 0.5)	Corresponds to minimum and  maximum subpopulation  effective sizes of <50 and  >1500 individuals, respectively.
4Nm	U(0.5 – 9.0)	Observed FST among  populations ~ 0.27 (Haag et al. 2005).  Corresponds to  expected FST between 0.1  and 0.67.
N0	U(1 – 100)	Estimated founding size in  Finnish metapopulation is 1.7  genotypes per founding event  (Haag et al. 2005).
e	U(0.001 – 0.999)	As it is a rate, e is naturally  bounded by 0 and 1.
σ e *	U(0.01– 0.25)	Lower bound – near constant  extinction rate across all  populations; Upper bound –  approaches a uniform  distribution of rates.

^*Only included in the variable e model simulations.