research
IICR and demographic inference
Researcher and co-author · INSA Toulouse / Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse · 2012–2021
Research on separating population-size variation from population structure using coalescent models and the inverse instantaneous coalescence rate.
This line of work asks what can be recovered from genomic data when several demographic mechanisms can produce similar patterns. In particular, changes in population size and changes in population structure can leave overlapping signatures in coalescence times.
The IICR, or inverse instantaneous coalescence rate, is a summary of the distribution of pairwise coalescence times. Under panmixia it coincides with a population-size history; under structure it generally does not. The associated papers develop this distinction, extend it to non-stationary structured coalescent models, and study when samples of two or three genes are informative for model choice.
Archived tutorials on PSMC and on simulating IICR curves with ms remain available in Writing.
Related publications
- Inferring number of populations and changes in connectivity under the n-island model (2021)
- Coalescence times for three genes provide sufficient information to distinguish population structure from population size changes (2019)
- The IICR and the non-stationary structured coalescent: towards demographic inference with arbitrary changes in population structure (2018)
- The IICR (inverse instantaneous coalescence rate) as a summary of genomic diversity: insights into demographic inference and model choice (2018)
- On the importance of being structured: instantaneous coalescence rates and human evolution—lessons for ancestral population size inference? (2016)
- Demographic inference using genetic data from a single individual: Separating population size variation from population structure (2015)