title: Asymptotic rates of growth of the extinction probability of a mutant gene.
abstract: We prove that a result of Haldane (1927) that relates the asymptotic behaviour of the extinction probability of a slightly supercritical Poisson branching process to the mean number of offspring is true for a general Bienaymé-Galton-Watson branching process, provided that the second derivatives of the probability-generating functions converge uniformly to a non-zero limit. We show also by examples that such a result is true more widely than our proof suggests and exhibit some counter-examples.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: F M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Hoppe
mesh_terms: D005787:Gene Frequency / Q000235:genetics*; D005796:Genes / Q000235:genetics; D008433:Mathematics; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics*; D011336:Probability