Related papers: Identifiability of a Coalescent-based Population T…
In a phylogenetic tree, we often don't have information about the time a speciation event (inner node) occured. Under a neutral model for speciation, I develop fast algorithms for calculating the probability that an inner node i is the k-th…
Identifiability concerns finding which unknown parameters of a model can be estimated from given input-output data. If some subset of the parameters of a model cannot be determined given input-output data, then we say the model is…
To introduce selection into a model of coalescence, I explore the use of modified integer partitions that allow the identification of a preferred lineage. I show that a partition-partition transition matrix, along with Monte Carlo discrete…
Latent tree models are graphical models defined on trees, in which only a subset of variables is observed. They were first discussed by Judea Pearl as tree-decomposable distributions to generalise star-decomposable distributions such as the…
Estimation of epidemiological and population parameters from molecular sequence data has become central to the understanding of infectious disease dynamics. Various models have been proposed to infer details of the dynamics that describe…
In this work we describe a new model for the evolution of a diploid structured population backwards in time that allows for large migrations and uneven offspring distributions. The model generalizes both the mean-field model of Birkner et…
One of the cornerstones in combating the HIV pandemic is being able to assess the current state and evolution of local HIV epidemics. This remains a complex problem, as many HIV infected individuals remain unaware of their infection status,…
Consider a haploid population which has evolved through an exchangeable reproduction dynamics, and in which all individuals alive at time $t$ have a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) who lived at time $A_t$, say. As time goes on, not only…
When an advantageous mutation occurs in a population, the favorable allele may spread to the entire population in a short time, an event known as a selective sweep. As a result, when we sample $n$ individuals from a population and trace…
The structure of an evolving network contains information about its past. Extracting this information efficiently, however, is, in general, a difficult challenge. We formulate a fast and efficient method to estimate the most likely history…
Variation in a sample of molecular sequence data informs about the past evolutionary history of the sample's population. Traditionally, Bayesian modeling coupled with the standard coalescent, is used to infer the sample's bifurcating…
Consider the diffusion process defined by the forward equation $u_t(t, x) = \tfrac{1}{2}\{x u(t, x)\}_{xx} - \alpha \{x u(t, x)\}_{x}$ for $t, x \ge 0$ and $-\infty < \alpha < \infty$, with an initial condition $u(0, x) = \delta(x - x_0)$.…
Longitudinal molecular data of rapidly evolving viruses and pathogens provide information about disease spread and complement traditional surveillance approaches based on case count data. The coalescent is used to model the genealogy that…
The problem of estimating the growth rate of a birth and death processes based on the coalescence times of a sample of $n$ individuals has been considered by several authors (\cite{stadler2009incomplete, williams2022life,…
Consider an arbitrary large population at the present time, originated at an unspecified arbitrary large time in the past, where individuals in the same generation reproduce independently, forward in time, with the same offspring…
Accessibility percolation is a new type of percolation problem inspired by evolutionary biology. To each vertex of a graph a random number is assigned and a path through the graph is called accessible if all numbers along the path are in…
Repetitions within a given genealogical tree provides some information about the degree of consanguineity of a population. They can be analyzed with techniques usually employed in statistical physics when dealing with fixed point…
We describe a new and computationally efficient Bayesian methodology for inferring species trees and demographics from unlinked binary markers. Likelihood calculations are carried out using diffusion models of allele frequency dynamics…
Testing fit of data to model is fundamentally important to any science, but publications in the field of phylogenetics rarely do this. Such analyses discard fundamental aspects of science as prescribed by Karl Popper. Indeed, not without…
We examine genetic statistics used in the study of structured populations. In a 1999 paper, Wakeley observed that the coalescent process associated with the finite island model can be decomposed into a scattering phase and a collecting…