Asymptotic rates of growth of the extinction probability of a mutant gene.

We prove that a result of Haldane (1927) that relates the asymptotic behaviour of the extinction probability of a slightly supercritical Poisson branching process to the mean number of offspring is true for a general Bienaymé-Galton-Watson branching process, provided that the second derivatives of the probability-generating functions converge uniformly to a non-zero limit. We show also by examples that such a result is true more widely than our proof suggests and exhibit some counter-examples.