TY - JOUR

T1 - A Comparison of Three Estimators of the Population-Scaled Recombination Rate: Accuracy and Robustness.

AU - Smith, Nick G. C.

AU - Fearnhead, Paul

PY - 2005

Y1 - 2005

N2 - We have performed simulations to assess the performance of three population genetics approximate-likelihood methods in estimating the population-scaled recombination rate from sequence data. We measured performance in two ways: accuracy when the sequence data were simulated according to the (simplistic) standard model underlying the methods and robustness to violations of many different aspects of the standard model. Although we found some differences between the methods, performance tended to be similar for all three methods. Despite the fact that the methods are not robust to violations of the underlying model, our simulations indicate that patterns of relative recombination rates should be inferred reasonably well even if the standard model does not hold. In addition, we assess various techniques for improving the performance of approximate-likelihood methods. In particular we find that the composite-likelihood method of HUDSON (2001) can be improved by including log-likelihood contributions only for pairs of sites that are separated by some prespecified distance.

AB - We have performed simulations to assess the performance of three population genetics approximate-likelihood methods in estimating the population-scaled recombination rate from sequence data. We measured performance in two ways: accuracy when the sequence data were simulated according to the (simplistic) standard model underlying the methods and robustness to violations of many different aspects of the standard model. Although we found some differences between the methods, performance tended to be similar for all three methods. Despite the fact that the methods are not robust to violations of the underlying model, our simulations indicate that patterns of relative recombination rates should be inferred reasonably well even if the standard model does not hold. In addition, we assess various techniques for improving the performance of approximate-likelihood methods. In particular we find that the composite-likelihood method of HUDSON (2001) can be improved by including log-likelihood contributions only for pairs of sites that are separated by some prespecified distance.

U2 - 10.1534/genetics.104.036293

DO - 10.1534/genetics.104.036293

M3 - Journal article

VL - 171

SP - 2051

EP - 2062

JO - Genetics

JF - Genetics

SN - 1943-2631

ER -