Coalescent theory of the directionality index.

The directionality index was introduced by Peter & Slatkin ( 67: 3274-3289, 2013) to infer the direction of range expansions from single-nucleotide polymorphism variation. Computed from the joint site frequency spectrum for two populations, uses shared genetic variants to measure the difference in the amount of genetic drift experienced by the populations, associating excess drift with greater distance from the origin of the range expansion. Although has been successfully applied in natural populations, its statistical properties have not been well understood. In this paper, we define as a random variable originating from a coalescent process in a two-population demography. For samples consisting of a pair of diploid genomes, one from each of two populations, we derive expressions for moments for standard parameterizations of bottlenecks during a founder event. For the expectation , we identify parameter combinations that represent distinct demographic scenarios yet yield the same value of . We also show that the variance increases with the time since the bottleneck, bottleneck severity, and size of the ancestral population. For a sample containing many SNPs, the central limit theorem allows us to approximate the distribution of the observed value of the index conditional on the demographic history. Finally, we analyze the values of computed from existing demographic models of and compare them with empirically computed . Our work builds the foundation for theoretical treatments of the index and can help in evaluating its behavior in empirical applications.