MULTIORIGIN

A program for exploring hypotheses about the number of origins and the time of origin of a species founded by discrete events.

MultiOrigin was developed to investigate the time-of-origin and the number-of-origin of polyploid species from multi-locus microsatellite data, using a rejection sampling strategy. The algorithm is based on a population divergence coalescence model that allows population growth. For pairs of species where geneflow only occurs in one direction and as discrete events, MultiOrigin allows the exploration of the time-of-origin, number-of-origin and unequal contribution of two founding lineages in relation to population size and population growth. The program is written in C++ and it is freely available.

[Download software for UNIX]
[Download software for Windows]

To use the the UNIX version, unzip and untar the files in an appropriate directory using

tar xvzf filename.tar.gz

where “filename.tar.gz” is the downloaded file. Run the program by typing

./MultiOrigin paramfile

In windows, open a command prompt and move to the location of the program. Run the program by typing

MultiOrigin paramfile

If you have comments or problems with MultiOrigin send Mattias Jakobsson an e-mail.

In Jakobsson et al. (2006), we describe the theory behind the program MultiOrigin. The paper also uses MultiOrigin to infer the number-of-origin and the time-of-origin of an allopolyploid plant species.

Software history:

December 2006, original upload of software, version 1.0