Sam Richard Gibbon

My current research focuses on the population genetics of and modeling selection for polyploids. While these models are very well developed for diploids, polyploids (specifically segmental allopolyploids) present an interesting set of challenges and novel results when subgenomes recombine with one another in double reduction. Because of this, inferring the distribution of fitness effects (DFEs) requires diffusion modeling, differential equations, and multinomial probability distributions to characterize the combined effects of random sampling, selection, and demography. The larger goal for this project is to expand the lab's current data analysis framework for diploids to also infer the DFE for polyploids.