ABSTRACT
A commonly used measure of diversity that is also blind to molecular distance between alleles is Nei’s gene diversity statistic. The Wright–Fisher model shows that the level of diversity with in a population can reach an equilibrium value whereby the generation of new alleles by mutation is balanced by the elimination of alleles by genetic drift. The distribution of the number of such differences between each allele and every other allele summarizes the discernible genetic diversity. Different methods for detecting selection measure different aspects of genetic diversity, and so detect evidence of selection on different time-scales. Geographical analyses of genetic data allow us to partially disentangle the relative contributions of history and geography to modern genetic diversity. Integrating geographic information with genetic data is a powerful approach for making inferences from genetic diversity, and will only increase in the future as sampling density increases.
