A dual process for the coupled Wright-Fisher diffusion

Martina Favero, Henrik Hult, Timo Koski

Published 2019-06-06Version 1

The coupled Wright-Fisher diffusion is a multi-dimensional Wright-Fisher diffusion for multi-locus and multi-allelic genetic frequencies, expressed as the strong solution to a system of stochastic differential equations that are coupled in the drift, where the pairwise interaction among loci is modelled by an inter-locus selection. In this paper, a dual process to the coupled Wright-Fisher diffusion is derived, which contains transition rates corresponding to coalescence and mutation as well as single-locus selection and double-locus selection. The coalescence and mutation rates correspond to the typical transition rates of Kingman's coalescent process. The single-locus selection rate not only contains the single-locus selection parameters in a form that generalises the rates for an ancestral selection graph, but it also contains the double-selection parameters to include the effect of the pairwise interaction on the single locus. The double-locus selection rate reflects the particular structure of pairwise interactions of the coupled Wright-Fisher diffusion. Moreover, in the special case of two loci, two alleles, with selection and parent independent mutation, the stationary density for the coupled Wright-Fisher diffusion and the transition rates of the dual process are obtained in an explicit form.