The minimal observable clade size of exchangeable coalescents

Abstract

For $\Lambda$-$n$-coalescents with mutation, we analyse the size $O_n$ of the partition block of $i\in \{1,\dots ,n\}$ at the time where the first mutation appears on the tree that affects $i$ and is shared with any other $j\in \{1,\dots ,n\}$. We provide asymptotics of $O_n$ for $n\to \infty$ and a recursion for all moments of $O_n$ for finite $n$. This variable gives an upper bound for the minimal clade size [2], which is not observable in real data. In applications to genetics, it has been shown to be useful to lower classification errors in genealogical model selection [10].