Finding the best resolution for the Kingman–Tajima coalescent: theory and applications

Many summary statistics currently used in population genetics and in phylogenetics depend only on a rather coarse resolution of the underlying tree (the number of extant lineages, for example). Hence, for computational purposes, working directly on these resolutions appears to be much more efficient. However, this approach seems to have been overlooked in the past. In this paper, we describe six different resolutions of the Kingman–Tajima coalescent together with the corresponding Markov chains, which are essential for inference methods. Two of the resolutions are the well-known n -coalescent and the lineage death process due to Kingman. Two other resolutions were mentioned by Kingman and Tajima, but never explicitly formalized. Another two resolutions are novel, and complete the picture of a multi-resolution coalescent. For all of them, we provide the forward and backward transition probabilities, the probability of visiting a given state as well as the probability of a given realization of the full Markov chain. We also provide a description of the state-space that highlights the computational gain obtained by working with lower-resolution objects. Finally, we give several examples of summary statistics that depend on a coarser resolution of Kingman’s coalescent, on which simulations are usually based.