Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1)

[RichardBuggs]

Hi Dennis,[quote=“DennisVenema, post:29, topic:37039”]
Even if the authors themselves do not specifically address it, the data certainly do.
[/quote]

I agree that the genomic data presented in the existing literature are relevant, and sufficient, for an analysis to address the short sharp bottleneck hypothesis. But if the authors have not done an appropriate analysis, someone else needs to. As far as I can see this has not been done. This is what I am saying in my blog.

@DennisVenema

I suppose what would be most convincing to you would be to have the 1000 genomes group, or Li and Durban, etc, run a simulation to see what their PSMC results would look like on an artificial dataset that is instantaneously reduced to 2 people. I think you’d see a result that gets down at least close to Ne=2 (or 20, or 200) even if it spread that result over a longer timescale, like we see in their papers.

In my blog I refer to a website that reports such a simulation, which found that PSMC could not detect sharp sudden bottlenecks. I also sketch out reasons why this is to be expected. I look forward to discussing this with you in more detail.