Coalescent Gene Genealogies

n

10

0

2N

4N

6N

8N

10N

The coalescent describes the genealogical relations of the lineages ancestral to a sample of genes. The sample size,

n

, may vary from 1 to 50 gene copies; each tree shows a possible genealogy among these copies with nodes representing the common ancestors of the sampled genes. The lengths of branches are randomly based on the probability of coalescence in a population of

2N

gene copies.