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Abstract

We review recent progress on ancestral processes related to mutation-selection models, both in the deterministic and the stochastic setting. We mainly rely on two concepts, namely, the killed ancestral selection graph and the pruned lookdown ancestral selection graph. The killed ancestral selection graph gives a representation of the type of a random individual from a stationary population, based upon the individual’s potential ancestry back until the mutations that define the individual’s type. The pruned lookdown ancestral selection graph allows one to trace the ancestry of individuals from a stationary distribution back into the distant past, thus leading to the stationary distribution of ancestral types. We illustrate the results by applying them to a prototype model for the error threshold phenomenon.

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Notes

  1. In the deterministic setting, it is more common to assume a neutral reproduction rate of 1 rather than 1 / 2. We work with the rate 1 / 2 here in order to obtain the pair coalescence rate of 1 that is standard in coalescence theory (see Sect. 3). Note that the deterministic dynamics (1) is unaffected by the neutral reproduction rate anyway.

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Acknowledgements

It is our pleasure to thank Fernando Cordero, Sebastian Hummel, and Ute Lenz for fruitful discussions. This project received financial support from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Priority Programme SPP 1590 Probabilistic Structures in Evolution, Grant Nos. BA 2469/5-1 and WA 967/4-1).

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Correspondence to Ellen Baake.

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This article is dedicated to the memory of Hans-Otto Georgii, whose joint work with the first author on ancestral lines in multitype branching processes [7, 26] laid foundations and provided motivation for the line of research reviewed here.

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Baake, E., Wakolbinger, A. Lines of Descent Under Selection. J Stat Phys 172, 156–174 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10955-017-1921-9

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