Thank you so much Mark!

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.

These deviations occur particularly when substantial multiple-crossover events are likely to occur within individuals, which reduces the effective rate of genetic recombination, causing an increase in the linked effects of selection.

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.

(a) When is rescaling reasonably accurate, and when does it break down? (b) Why does rescaling lead to the observed biases? (c) Can we realistically simulate whole genomes?

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 –

Thank you so much for the super fun visit @evolscientist.bsky.social ! Had so many fun science chats yesterday!