Rhh: an R extension for estimating multilocus heterozygosity and heterozygosity-heterozygosity correlation

Abstract

Individual multilocus heterozygosity estimates based on a limited number of loci are expected to correlate only weakly with the inbreeding level of an individual. Before using multilocus heterozygosity estimates in studies of inbreeding, their ability to capture information on inbreeding in the given setting should be tested. A convenient method for this is to compute the heterozygosity-heterozygosity correlation, i.e. the mean correlation between multilocus heterozygosity estimates calculated from random samples of loci, which should be positive if multilocus heterozygosity carries a signature of inbreeding. Rhh is an extension package for the statistical software r that estimates this correlation and calculates three measures of individual multilocus heterozygosity: homozygosity by loci, internal relatedness and standardized heterozygosity. The extension package is available through the CRAN (http://cran.r-project.org) and has a homepage at http://www.helsinki.fi/biosci/egru/research/software.