Evolution of the most recent common ancestor of a population with no selection

D. Simon, B. Derrida,

J. Stat. Mech. (2006) P05002 ,

https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0601167,

Abstract:

We consider the evolution of a population of fixed size with no selection. The number of generations $G$ to reach the first common ancestor evolves in time. This evolution can be described by a simple Markov process which allows one to calculate several characteristics of the time dependence of $G$. We also study how G is correlated to the genetic diversity.