Section: Application Domains

Population genetics

select develops new methods of statistical inference on molecular data obtained from population samples. Some of these methods are aimed at treating complex evolutionary scenarios, including several populations related by phylogenetic trees, with possible admixture and/or migration. Other methods will explicitly take into account the spatial distribution of samples. Inference concerns the parameters of these scenarii, which mainly characterize the population demographic history and the mutation model of markers. The explicit use of geographic information allows for a more efficient characterization of evolutionary episodes poorly analyzed by existing methods, such as bioinvasions or shifts of species distribution areas due to global climatic changes. The analysis of complex scenarii combines two algorithms: an Importance Sampling algorithm to estimate the data likelihood under a given scenario and with given values of parameters and a second algorithm (to be determined) to explore efficiently the parameter space.