The TMRCA of general genealogies in populations of variable size

Abstract

We study the time to the most recent common ancestor of a sample of finite size in a wide class of genealogical models for populations with variable size. This is made possible by recently developed results on inhomogeneous phase-type random variables, allowing us to obtain the density and the moments of the TMRCA of time-dependent coalescent processes in terms of matrix formulas. We also provide matrix sim- plifications permitting a more straightforward calculation. With these results, the TMRCA provides an explicative variable to distinguish different evolutionary scenarios.