In this talk we present a joint result with Peter Jagers. It concerns a haploid population model with fixed size N, overlapping generations, and possibly non-Poisson distribution of the offspring numbers. We suggest a general formular for the effective size Ne as a fraction of the actual size N, with a reduction factor expressed in terms of the stationary age probabilities, age specific means and variances of offspring numbers. This formula is tried on the Swedish female population data and compared to the Felsenstein formula dealing with the special case of Poisson offspring numbers. No prior knowledge of population genetics is required.
 

Convenor:Kais Hamza