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Record W4407349156 · doi:10.1111/mec.17670

The Idiot's Guide to Effective Population Size

2025· review· en· W4407349156 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Robin S. Waples

Bibliographic record

VenueMolecular Ecology · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicGenetic diversity and population structure
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsIdiotRelevance (law)BiologyData sciencePopulationConstruct (python library)Effective population sizeComputer scienceGenetic diversitySociology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

ABSTRACT This is a reference manual for the elegant, yet hideously complex concept of effective population size ( N e ), inspired by a classic, self‐published manual of automotive repair ‘for the compleat idiot’. The Guide is timely, given the recent Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, where 196 Parties committed to tracking genetic diversity—and estimating N e —for all species. N e is a human construct, but a useful one that allows us to capture diverse aspects of an organism's biology in a single number. The Guide collates in one location factual information about effective population size, with a focus on topics of practical relevance to scientists and managers studying real populations; it covers definition, computation and estimation of effective size, both demographically and genetically. As appropriate, the reader is directed to other primary sources for more details. A ‘Don't Do These Things’ section lists several ill‐advised approaches to dealing with N e , and an Appendix provides useful tools and practical suggestions for interested users. A special section considers both possibilities and challenges presented by the genomics revolution. Availability of vast numbers of genetic markers increases precision, but less than some might think, and simultaneously introduces new challenges involving filtering and bioinformatics processing. As annotated genomes become more common for non‐model species, opportunities are opened to address qualitatively different questions, including reconstructing historical changes in N e through time.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.978
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0010.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.005
GPT teacher head0.295
Teacher spread0.290 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations62
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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