Can one hear the shape of a population history?

TL;DR

This paper establishes theoretical bounds on the amount of coalescence time data required to accurately reconstruct a population's history from genetic data, highlighting the limitations and data needs of current methods.

Contribution

It provides tight bounds on the data needed for population history inference using coalescent models, advancing understanding of the information limits in population genetics.

Findings

Derived bounds on coalescence time data requirements

Quantified the data needed for accurate population history reconstruction

Provided insights into the limitations of current genetic inference methods

Abstract

Reconstructing past population size from present day genetic data is a major goal of population genetics. Recent empirical studies infer population size history using coalescent-based models applied to a small number of individuals. Here we provide tight bounds on the amount of exact coalescence time data needed to recover the population size history of a single, panmictic population at a certain level of accuracy. In practice, coalescence times are estimated from sequence data and so our lower bounds should be taken as rather conservative.