Estimation of effective number of breeders from molecular coancestry of single cohort sample

The effective population size, N e, is an important parameter in population genetics and conservation biology. It is, however, difficult to directly estimate N e from demographic data in many wild species. Alternatively, the use of genetic data has received much attention in recent years. In the present study, I propose a new method for estimating the effective number of breeders N eb from a parameter of allele sharing (molecular coancestry) among sampled progeny. The bias and confidence interval of the new estimator are compared with those from a published method, i.e. the heterozygote-excess method, using computer simulation. Two population models are simulated; the noninbred population that consists of noninbred and nonrelated parents and the inbred population that is composed of inbred and related parents. Both methods give essentially unbiased estimates of N eb when applied to the noninbred population. In the inbred population, the proposed method gives a downward biased estimate, but the confidence interval is remarkably narrowed compared with that in the noninbred population. Estimate from the heterozygote-excess method is nearly unbiased in the inbred population, but suffers from a larger confidence interval. By combining the estimates from the two methods as a harmonic mean, the reliability is remarkably improved.