Section: Mathematical & Computational Biology
Topic: Evolution, Genetics/genomics, Population biology

SelNeTime: a python package inferring effective population size and selection intensity from genomic time series data

Uhl, Mathieu1, 2 orcid ; Bunel, Paul1, 3  ; de Navascués, Miguel1 orcid; Boitard, Simon1 orcid ; Servin, Bertrand3 orcid 
1CBGP, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, IRD, Institut Agro Montpellier, Montpellier, France
2CEFE, CNRS, Montpellier, France
3GenPhySE, Université de Toulouse, INRAE, INPT, Castanet-Tolosan, France

Corresponding author(s): Bunel, Paul (paul.bunel@inrae.fr)

10.24072/pcjournal.708 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e46

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Genomic samples collected from a single population over several generations provide direct access to the genetic diversity changes occurring within a specific time period. This provides information about both demographic and adaptive processes acting on the population during that period. A common approach to analyze such data is to model observed allele counts in finite samples using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) where hidden states are true allele frequencies over time (i.e. a trajectory). The HMM framework allows one to compute the full likelihood of the data, while accounting both for the stochastic evolution of population allele frequencies along time and for the noise arising from sampling a limited number of individuals at possibly spread out generations. Several such HMM methods have been proposed so far, differing mainly in the way they model the transition probabilities of the Markov chain. Following Paris et al. (2019a), we consider here the Beta with Spikes approximation, which avoids the computational issues associated to the Wright-Fisher model while still including fixation probabilities, in contrast to other standard approximations of this model like the Gaussian or Beta distributions. To facilitate the analysis and exploitation of genomic time series data, we present an improved version of Paris et al. (2019a) ‘s approach, denoted SelNeTime, whose computation time is drastically reduced and which accurately estimates effective population size (assuming no selection) or the selection intensity at each locus (given a previously estimated value of N). We also evaluate the performance of this method in realistic situations where selection is present and both demography and selection need to be inferred. SelNeTime is implemented in a user friendly python package, which can also easily simulate genomic time series data under a user-defined evolutionary model and sampling design.

Published online:
DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.708
Type: Research article
Classification:
Keywords: population genomics, effective population size, selection intensity, hidden Markov models

Uhl, Mathieu  1 , 2 ; Bunel, Paul  1 , 3 ; de Navascués, Miguel  1 ; Boitard, Simon  1 ; Servin, Bertrand  3

1 CBGP, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, IRD, Institut Agro Montpellier, Montpellier, France
2 CEFE, CNRS, Montpellier, France
3 GenPhySE, Université de Toulouse, INRAE, INPT, Castanet-Tolosan, France
License: CC-BY 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights
Uhl, M.; Bunel, P.; de Navascués, M.; Boitard, S.; Servin, B. SelNeTime: a python package inferring effective population size and selection intensity from genomic time series data. Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article  no. e46. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.708
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PCI peer reviews and recommendation, and links to data, scripts, code and supplementary information: 10.24072/pci.mcb.100406

Conflict of interest of the recommender and peer reviewers:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.

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