ARES: Software to compare allelic richness between uneven samples

Abstract

Allelic richness is one of the most basic measures of genetic diversity. Its calculation is, however, still problematic because estimates depend on sample size. This paper describes an r library that calculates mean allelic richness with confidence bounds for a range of sample sizes. It takes a file in genepop format as input, or alternatively a binary data matrix with columns representing different individuals and rows representing different alleles. The output is tabular as well as graphical. Unlike existing tools, ares does extrapolate beyond the sample size and provides confidence bounds for these predictions. © 2007 The Authors.