The Number Of Segregating Sites In Expanding Human-Populations, With Implications For Estimates Of Demographic Parameters

The frequency distribution of pairwise differences between sequences of mtDNA has recently been used to estimate the size of human populations before and after a hypothetical episode of rapid population growth and the time at which the population grew. To test the internal consistency of this method, we used three different sets of human mtDNA data and the corresponding demographic parameters estimated from the distribution of pairwise differences to determine by simulation the expected number of segregating sites, S, and its empirical distribution. The results indicate that the observed values of S are significantly lower than expected in two of three cases under the assumption of the infinite-sites model. Further simulations in which mutations were allowed to occur more than once at the same site and in which there was variation in mutation rate among sites show that the expected number of segregating sites can be much lower than under the infinite-sites assumption. Nevertheless, the observed value of S is still. significantly different from the value expected under the expansion hypothesis in two of three cases.