title: Estimating pairwise relatedness between individuals with different levels of ploidy.
abstract: Estimates of relatedness coefficients, based on genetic marker data, are often necessary for studies of genetics and ecology. Whilst many estimates based on method-of-moment or maximum-likelihood methods exist for diploid organisms, no such estimators exist for organisms with multiple ploidy levels, which occur in some insect and plant species. Here, we extend five estimators to account for different levels of ploidy: one relatedness coefficient estimator, three coefficients of coancestry estimators and one maximum-likelihood estimator. We use arrhenotoky (when unfertilized eggs develop into haploid males) as an example in evaluations of estimator performance by Monte Carlo simulation. Also, three virtual sex-determination systems are simulated to evaluate their performances for higher levels of ploidy. Additionally, we used two real data sets to test the robustness of these estimators under actual conditions. We make available a software package, PolyRelatedness, for other researchers to apply to organisms that have various levels of ploidy.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Kang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4.
authors.forename: Kermit
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ritland
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Songtao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Derek W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Dunn
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.|Institute of Zoology, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710032, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoguang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Pei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710069, China.|Institute of Zoology, Shaanxi Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710032, China.
authors.forename: Baoguo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D007313:Insecta / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D011003:Ploidies; D012984:Software
keywords: arrhenotoky; maximum-likelihood; method-of-moment; relatedness coefficient