popRange: a highly flexible spatially and temporally explicit Wright-Fisher simulator

Area of Science:

• Population genetics
• Computational biology
• Evolutionary genetics

Background:

• Advancements in sequencing and genotyping yield vast spatial and temporal genetic datasets.
• Existing methods are insufficient for testing complex hypotheses with these large-scale data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce popRange, a novel forward genetic simulator.
• To provide a flexible tool for incorporating complex demographic and selective models into genetic simulations.

Main Methods:

• popRange simulates large-scale genetic data using stochastic, spatially and temporally explicit models.
• It incorporates variable selection coefficients and demographic parameters.
• The simulator is implemented as an R package.

Main Results:

• popRange successfully simulates genetic data under complex scenarios.
• An example demonstrates simulating an allele's trajectory across subpopulations.

Conclusions:

• popRange empowers researchers to evaluate complex evolutionary hypotheses.
• The R package facilitates testing intricate demographic and selective features in genetic data.
• popRange is publicly available for download.