Lineage sorting in apes

Abstract

Recombination allows different parts of the genome to have different genealogical histories. When a species splits in two, allelic lineages sort into the two descendant species, and this lineage sorting varies along the genome. If speciation events are close in time, the lineage sorting process may be incomplete at the second speciation event and lead to gene genealogies that do not match the species phylogeny. We review different recent approaches to model lineage sorting along the genome and show how it is possible to learn about population sizes, natural selection, and recombination rates in ancestral species from application of these models to genome alignments of great ape species.

Keywords: great apes evolution; incomplete lineage sorting; phylogenetics; population genomics; speciation.