Allele-sharing methods for estimation of population size
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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

An Allele-specific Gene Expression Assay to Test the Functional Basis of Genetic Associations
Published on: November 3, 2010
1Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway. skaug@Imar.no
Abstract:
Genetic data are becoming increasingly important in ecology and conservation biology. This article presents a novel method for estimating population size from DNA profiles obtained from a random sample of individuals. The underlying idea is that the degree of biological relationship between individuals in the sample reflects the size of the population and that DNA profiles provide information about relatedness. A pseudolikelihood approach is taken, involving pairwise comparison of individuals. The main field of applications is seen to be catch data, and as an example, the method is applied to DNA profiles (10 microsatellite loci) from 334 North Atlantic minke whales. It is concluded that the sample size is too small for the method to give useful results. The question about the required sample size is investigated by simulation.
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