Counting Alleles with Rarefaction: Private Alleles and Hierarchical Sampling Designs

The number of alleles (allelic richness) in a population is a fundamental measure of genetic variation, and a useful statistic for identifying populations for conservation. Estimating allelic richness is complicated by the effects of sample size: large samples are expected to have more alleles. Rarefaction solves this problem. This communication extends the rarefaction procedure to count private alleles and to accommodate hierarchical sampling designs.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]