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Effective size of populations with unequal sex ratio and variation in mating success
Author(s) -
Nomura T.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of animal breeding and genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.689
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1439-0388
pISSN - 0931-2668
DOI - 10.1046/j.1439-0388.2002.00347.x
Subject(s) - mating , harem , mating system , biology , sex ratio , population , variation (astronomy) , zoology , statistics , mathematics , ecology , demography , physics , sociology , astrophysics
Summary To estimate the effective size ( N e ) of populations with unequal sex ratio, a well‐known formula, N e =4 N m N f /( N m + N f ), has been frequently used, where N m and N f are the numbers of male and female parents, respectively. In this paper, the formula was examined under typical mating systems in animals. It was shown that the formula holds only when there are no variations in the numbers of mates (mating success) of parents of each sex. More appropriate equations were developed by accounting for the variation in mating success. It was found that for animal populations with harem mating system, an equation N e =4 N m N f /(2 N m + N f ) gives a more accurate estimate than the well‐known formula. The effective population sizes of several wild, experimental and domestic animals are estimated by applying the derived equations to the published demographic and ecological data.