Population genetics: coalescence rate and demographic parameters inference

Abstract

Inferring the demographic history of species is a great challenge in population genetics. This history is classically represented as a history of size changes, ignoring population structure. We present here the work carried out over the last decade around the concept of IICR (Inverse Instantaneous Coalescence Rate), which makes it possible to link, on the one hand, the history of the true population size for a panmictic population, and the inferred size, sometimes called "effective size", when structure is taken into account. We show that population structure can lead to misinterpretations of some demographic history inference results, we propose a framework for inferring structure-specific demographic parameters (number and size of subpopulations, migration rates), and we analyze the link between IICR and some form of selection modeling on genetic sequences.