Nice link. I wonder if anyone knows of a similar type of software that simulates the continued occurence of new alleles rising by mutation, and their subsequent drift in the population?
So instead of just following the population history of two alleles at some set initial frequency, for a set number of generations, instead it also shows how every generation new alleles arise and are either lost or fixed by selection.
I’ve often come across the misconception that because the fixation probability of a newly arising neutral mutation is low, this means one can in effect assume newly arising neutral mutations never reach fixation.
Which is of course very wrong, but instead of just throwing the equations at people that prove this to be wrong, a graphical simulation that actually show the effect continously over time would be very instructive.
I’m thinking something like the “Twenty generations of random drift” example in your link, except it keeps running and we just see generations scroll by and new mutations continously arise in the population and then drift as they do. This would also help illustrate how, at any given moment, the extant population will most often constitute some mix of alleles having arose many generations in the past, and how this is a continous process where new alleles constantly arise in that same fashion.
It would help illustrate how the current standing genetic variation in a population is a product of a vast history of mutations arising in the past, and therefore how despite the initial probability of fixation being low, this continued onslaught of new mutations arising still unavoidably leads to variation and eventual continued fixation.
Edit: I found something closer to what I want to see, like this: Genetic drift simulator
This keeps running, but unfortunately doesn’t include a spontaneous mutation rate. If there was some small chance of new alleles being generated by mutation every generation (and you could perhaps set the mutation rate) it would be exactly what I had in mind.