Figure 1.

Bounds on F_ST as a function of the frequency of the most frequent allele, M, for a multiallelic locus, for each of several different numbers of subpopulations K. (a) K = 2, (b) K=3, (c) K=6, (d) K = 40 and (e) K = 100. The grey regions represent the space between the upper and lower bounds on F_ST. The dashed lines represent the curves that the jagged maximal F_ST touches when M < 1/K, computed from equation (3.2). The upper bound is computed from equation (3.1); for each K, the lower bound is 0 for all values of M.