Effective population size

Ecological concept

The effective population size (Ne) is the size of an idealised population that would experience the same rate of genetic drift as the real population, whereby the latter, due mainly to the limited proportion of breeding individuals, has a normally larger census population size N. Idealised populations are based on unrealistic but convenient assumptions including random mating, simultaneous birth of each new generation, and constant population size. For most quantities of interest and most real populations, Ne is smaller than the census population size N of a real population. The same real population usually has a different effective population size for each distinct property of interest, such as genetic drift or inbreeding.

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