But, hitchhiking effects near functional regions are relatively unaffected by rescaling the population. Finally, we discuss how to accurately rescale simulations.

Similarly, the increase in the number of deleterious mutations per individual (in highly rescaled simulations of large regions) leads to excessive Hill-Robertson interference, causing a skewed offspring distribution.

We find that while rescaling has minimal effects with most length and scaling factor combinations, simulating long regions with large scaling factors can introduce biases.

We thoroughly test the effects of rescaling in populations experiencing direct and linked effects of selection for various scaling factors and genomic lengths in D. melanogaster-like populations. Whenever possible, we compare our observations from simulations to expected theoretical predictions.

Recently, multiple studies have shown that rescaling forward simulations does not accurately capture the evolutionary dynamics of an unscaled population. However, some important questions remain unanswered –

Our latest preprint about the effects of rescaling forward-in-time simulations in population genetics - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...