W7L1、measuring the differentiation across population

Question 1

What is effective population size

Answer 1

the number of breeding individuals in an idealised population that would show the same amount of dispersion of allele frequencies under random genetic drift or the same amount of inbreeding as the population under consideration

Question 2

Background information on measuring differentiation across population

Answer 2

Natural populations are typically big but proceed from a small initial pool of founders which implies strong demographic expansion, likely to have fluctuated over time; and so do all other evolutionary processes.
To estimate this, wright introduced the ideas of an effective population

Question 3

Measuring the differentiation across populations

Answer 3

Question 4

The island model

Answer 4

Question 5

Isolation-by-Distance Model

Answer 5

Question 6

Admixture Model

Answer 6

Question 7

Take home message on measuring the differentiation across population

Answer 7

The Fst approaches to population genetics relied on individual loci and discrete populations
Most natural populations do not show such a discrete clustering of the genetic variation.
More advanced models enable a finer analysis of the distribution of the genetic variability across populations as proposed under models of Isolation-by-Distance.
Correlation among allele frequencies for numerous loci identifies more precisely the underlying population structure, Allow to perform ancestral population clustering without a priori definition and drawing the pattern of admixture between population.