Rates of decay for the survival probability of a mutant gene II The multitype case

This paper extends the results of 1] to the multitype case. For a multitype branching process that is slightly supercritical, approximations for the survival probability in terms of the maximal eigenvalue of the mean matrix and a generalized variance ² are developed. Our results improve upon those of Hoppe 5] and Eshel 3] that seek to validate a conjecture of Ewens 4].Research supported in part by NSF grant DMS 9007182