The ancestral selection graph under strong directional selection

Abstract

The ancestral selection graph (ASG) was introduced by Neuhauser and Krone (1997) in order to study populations of constant size which evolve under selection. Coalescence events, which occur at rate 1 for every pair of lines, lead to joint ancestry. In addition, splitting events in the ASG at rate α, the scaled selection coefficient, produce possible ancestors, such that the real ancestor depends on the ancestral alleles. Here, we use the ASG in the case without mutation in order to study fixation of a beneficial mutant. Using our main tool, a reversibility property of the ASG, we provide a new proof of the fact that a beneficial allele fixes roughly in time (2logα)/α if α is large.