Diploid populations and their genealogies

Abstract

Diploid organisms carry pairs of homologous chromosomes that are inherited from two parents who each contribute exactly one homologous chromosome, while haploid organisms inherit just one copy from a single parent. In this contribution, we summarise classical results on the genealogies of haploid populations with large but fixed total population size, which have also been used as approximations to the diploid case by ignoring the pairing into individuals. We then present recent results on extending the characterisation of the genealogies to analogous, explicitly diploid models. We discuss the implications and illustrate them by means of a number of concrete examples. Lastly, we survey related research works and further questions regarding the modelling of diploid reproduction.