Effective population size (Ne) estimated from DNA sequence variability

Range 10,000 - 20,000 individuals
Organism Human Homo sapiens
Reference Charlesworth B. Fundamental concepts in genetics: effective population size and patterns of molecular evolution and variation. Nat Rev Genet. 2009 Mar10(3):195-205. doi: 10.1038/nrg2526. p.199 right column 2nd paragraphPubMed ID19204717
Primary Source [55] Voight, B. F. et al. Interrogating multiple aspects of variation in a full resequencing data set to infer human population size changes. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 18508–18513 (2005). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0507325102 [62] Wall, J. D. & Przeworski, M. When did the human population size start increasing? Genetics 155, 1865–1874 (2000).PubMed ID16352722, 10924481
Comments P.199 right column 2nd paragraph: "As might be expected from the theoretical results, effective population sizes are often found to be much lower than the observed numbers of breeding individuals in both natural and artificial populations (refs 9, 10, 61). The human population, for example, is estimated from DNA sequence variability to have an Ne of 10,000 to 20,000, because of its long past history of small numbers of individuals and relatively recent expansion in size (primary sources). Larger population sizes in the past other than for extant populations have, however, sometimes been inferred from diversity estimates, for example, Atlantic whales, probably reflecting the devastating effects of whaling on their population sizes (ref 63)."
Entered by Uri M
ID 113339