The development team of Chi Do, Robin Waples, David Peel, Bree Tillett and Jenny Ovenden have been working together since March 2010 to produce this major re-write of the original NeEstimator software.
The re-write brings together three methods that produce estimates of effective size from a single population sample of genotypes. It also implements the two-sample (ie temporal) method. In addition, there is an improved method for dealing with missing data within genotypes, options for screening out rare alleles allowing the user to evaluate their effects, confidence intervals for all estimates and corrections for temporal sampling when individuals are not removed from the population (ie Plan I sampling). The software is able to analyse large datasets with large (10,000 or more) numbers of genetic markers and there are options for batch processing large numbers of datasets.
When not in batch mode, the software is controlled by a user friendly interface and there are versions for the mac, linux and PC.
Watch out for the publication of the program note in Molecular Ecology Resources.
Do, C., Waples, R. S., Peel, D., Macbeth, G. M., Tillet, B. J. & Ovenden, J. R. (In press). NeEstimator V2: re-implementation of software for the estimation of contemporary effective population size (Ne) from genetic data. Molecular Ecology Resources.
Click on this link to download NeEstimator v2.0 and your feedback is appreciated.
