COALESCENT THEORY FOR A PARTIALLY SELFING POPULATION

A coalescent theory for a sample of DNA sequences from a partially sel fing diploid population and an algorithm for simulating such samples a re developed in this article. Approximate formulas are given for the e xpectation and the variance of the number of segregating sites in a sa mple of k sequences from n individuals. Several new estimators of the important parameters theta = 4A mu and the selfing rate s, where N and mu are, respectively, the effective population size and the mutation rate per sequence per generation, are proposed and their sampling prop erties are studied.