Effective Size of Nonrandom Mating Populations

Nonrandom mating whereby parents are related is expected to cause a reduction in effective population size because their gene frequencies are correlated and this will increase the genetic drift. The published equation for the variance effective size, Ne, which includes the possibility of nonrandom mating, does not take into account such a correlation, however. Further, previous equations to predict effective sizes in populations with partial sib mating are shown to be different, but also incorrect. In this paper, a corrected form of these equations is derived and checked by stochastic simulation. For the case of stable census number, N, and equal progeny distributions for each sex, the equation is formula: see text], where Sk2 is the variance of family size and alpha is the departure from Hardy-Weinberg proportions. For a Poisson distribution of family size (Sk2 = 2), it reduces to Ne = N/(1 + alpha), as when inbreeding is due to selfing. When nonrandom mating occurs because there is a specified system of partial inbreeding every generation, alpha can be substituted by Wright's FIS statistic, to give the effective size as a function of the proportion of inbred mates.