Fixation probabilities and hitting times under low levels of frequency-dependent selection

Abstract

In population genetics, diffusions on the unit interval are often used to model the frequency path of an allele. In this setting we derive approximations for fixation probabilities, expected hitting times and the expected site-frequency-spectrum under small frequency-dependent selection. Specifically, we rederive and extend the one-third rule of evolutionary game theory (Nowak et al., 2004) and effects of stochastic slowdown (Altrock and Traulsen, 2009). Since similar effects are of interest in other application areas, we formulate our results for general one-dimensional diffusions.