Population Differentiation: Measures

The genetic divergence between populations can be quantified using different measures. The crucial parameters of the population structure, divergence times and migration rates, can be estimated using polymorphism data.

Keywords: population structure; Fst; genetic distance; divergence time; migration

 References
    book Beaumont MA, Ibrahim KA, Boursot P and Bruford MW (1998) "Measuring genetic distance". In: Karp A, Isaac PG and Ingram DS (eds) Molecular Tools for Screening Biodiversity, pp. 315–327. London: Chapman & Hall.
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 Further Reading
    Barbujani G (2000) Geographic patterns: how to identify them and why. Human Biology 72: 133–153.
    Beerli P (2006) Comparison of Bayesian and maximum-likelihood inference of population genetic parameters. Bioinformatics 22: 341–345.
    Beerli P and Felsenstein J (2001) Maximum likelihood estimation of a migration matrix and effective population sizes in n subpopulations by using a coalescent approach. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 98: 4563–4568.
    Bertorelle G and Rannala B (1998) Using rare mutations to estimate population divergence times: a maximum likelihood approach. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 95: 15452–15457.
    Goldstein DB, Ruiz Linares A, Cavalli-Sforza LL and Feldman MW (1995) Genetic absolute dating based on microsatellites and the origin of modern humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 92: 6723–6727.
    Hamilton G, Currat M, Ray N et al. (2005) Bayesian estimation of recent migration rates after a spatial expansion. Genetics 170: 409–417.
    Luikart G and England PR (1999) Statistical analysis of microsatellite DNA data. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 14: 253–256.
    Pritchard JK, Stephens M and Donnelly P (2000) Inference of population structure using multilocus genotype data. Genetics 155: 945–959.
    Slatkin M (1995) A measure of population subdivision based on microsatellite allele frequencies. Genetics 139: 457–462.
    Weir BS and Cockerham CC (1984) Estimating F-statistics for the analysis of population structure. Evolution 38: 1358–1370.
    Wilson GA and Rannala B (2003) Bayesian inference of recent migration rates using multilocus genotypes. Genetics 163: 1177–1191.
    Wright S (1951) The genetical structure of populations. Annals of Eugenics 15: 323–354.
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Mona, Stefano, and Bertorelle, Giorgio(Mar 2008) Population Differentiation: Measures. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005456.pub2]