Estimation of migration rates and population sizes in geographically structured populations

The estimation of population parameters from genetic data can help reveal past migration patterns or past population sizes. The transformation of raw genetic data into population parameters requires a model which should reflect the true relationships between subpopulations. Often the models are overly simplified and do not allow, for example, for differences in population sizes and migration rates. I stress here the point that it is important to consider possible asymmetries in migration rates and differences in population sizes. Very recently, several estimators based on the direct use of allele frequencies and based on coalescence theory have been developed. All these outperform migration rate estimators based on F-ST.