Idealised population

In population genetics an idealised population is one that can be described using a number of simplifying assumptions. Models of idealised populations are either used to make a general point, or they are fit to data on real populations for which the assumptions may not hold true. For example, coalescent theory is used to fit data to models of idealised populations. The most common idealized population in population genetics is the Fisher-Wright population after R.A. Fisher and Sewall Wright. Wright-Fisher populations have constant size, and their members can mate and reproduce with any other member. Another example is a Moran model, which has overlapping generations, rather than the non-overlapping generations of the Wright-Fisher model. The complexities of real populations can cause their behavior to match an idealised population with an effective population size that is very different from the census population size of the real population. For sexual diploids, idealized populations will have genotype frequencies related to the allele frequencies according to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.