Abstract
We present here a simple approach to obtain reliable estimates of the effective population size in real world populations via the computation of the increase in inbreeding for each individual (delta F i ) in a given population. The values of delta F i are computed as t-root of 1 - (1 - F i ) where F i is the inbreeding coefficient and t is the equivalent complete generations for each individual. The values of delta F computed for a pre-defined reference subset can be averaged and used to estimate effective size. A standard error of this estimate of Ne can be further computed from the standard deviation of the individual increase in inbreeding. The methodology is demonstrated by applying it to several simulated examples and to a real pedigree in which other methodologies fail when considering reference subpopulations. The main characteristics of the approach and its possible use are discussed both for predictive purposes and for analyzing genealogies.
Similar content being viewed by others
(To access the full article, please see PDF)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
About this article
Cite this article
Gutiérrez, J.P., Cervantes, I., Molina, A. et al. Individual increase in inbreeding allows estimating effective sizes from pedigrees. Genet Sel Evol 40, 359 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1297-9686-40-4-359
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1297-9686-40-4-359