Stationary Allele Frequency Distributions

Forces that determine the allele frequencies in natural populations include genetic drift, natural selection, migration and mutation. A balance of opposing forces can, in some cases, cause allele frequencies to approach a stationary distribution over time. The form of this distribution is not influenced by initial allele frequencies, but instead is determined by the relative magnitudes of different evolutionary forces.

Keywords: probability distribution; neutral theory; migration; mutation; sampling distribution; population genetics

 References
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 Further Reading
    book Ewens WJ (1979) Mathematical Population Genetics. New York: Springer.
    Fearnhead P (2006) The stationary distribution of allele frequencies when selection acts at unlinked loci. Theoretical Population Biology 70: 376–386.
    book Gale JS (1990) Theoretical Population Genetics. London, UK: Unwin Hyman.
    book Medhi J (1994) Stochastic Processes, 2nd edn. New Delhi, India: Wiley Eastern.
    book Rice JA (1995) Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis, 2nd edn. Belmont, CA: Duxbury Press.
    Whittaker JC, Harbord RM, Boxall N et al. (2003) Likelihood-based estimation of microsatellite mutation rates. Genetics 164: 781–787.
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Rannala, Bruce(Mar 2008) Stationary Allele Frequency Distributions. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005465.pub2]