The stepping stone model: New formulas expose old myths (Q1872358)

The authors study the stepping stone model on the two-dimensional torus. They prove several new hitting time results for random walks from which they derive some simple approximation formulas for homozygosity in the stepping stone model as a function of the separation of the colonies and for Wright's genetic distance \(F_{ST}\). These results confirm a result of \textit{J. F. Crow} and \textit{K. Aoki} [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 81, 6073--6077 (1984; Zbl 0559.92016)] found by simulation: in the usual biological range of parameters \(F_{ST}\) grows like the \(\log\) of the number of colonies.