Coalescence 2.0: a multiple branching of recent theoretical developments and their applications

Population genetics theory has laid the foundations for genomics analyses including the recent burst in genome scans for selection and statistical inference of past demographic events in many prokaryote, animal and plant species. Identifying SNPs under natural selection and underpinning species adaptation relies on disentangling the respective contribution of random processes (mutation, drift, migration) from that of selection on nucleotide variability. Most theory and statistical tests have been developed using the Kingmans coalescent theory based on the Wright-Fisher population model. However, these theoretical models rely on biological and life-history assumptions which may be violated in