Sex-linked effective population size in control populations, with particular reference to honeybees (Apis mellifera L.)

Abstract

Sex-linked effective population size (Ne) is derived for a variety of control population structures relevant to normal diploid and/or, more importantly, to haplo-diploid species. For equal sex ratio, it is shown that the control population structure which doubles autosomal effective population size trebles sex-linked effective size. For haplo-diploid species where the number of males exceeds the number of reproductive females, several different control structures are described, which tend to increase effective population size by about 1/3. These would be suitable for stock maintenance of honeybees. Directional selection programmes employing within-family selection would maintain most of the minimum drift/inbreeding properties of these control populations.