GenAlEx News (Posted 22-Dec-2009)
GenAlEx 6.3 is now available for downloading. This new version of GenAlEx provides an exciting new option for calculating Shannon's Diversity Indices for population genetics based on the paper by Sherwin et al (2006):
Sherwin WB, Jobot F, Rush R and Rossetto M (2006) Measurement of biological information with applications from genes to landscapes. Molecular Ecology, 15, 2857-2869.
Shannon's diversity index for information theory (Shannon 1948) has been widely employed in ecology but has been less widely used in population genetics. Sherwin et al. (2006) showed that Shannon's Indices offer some ideal statistical properties for measuring biological information across multiple scales from genes to landscapes. We are pleased to make this first Shannon module available to GenAlEx users in the hope that it will make Shannon Diversity analysis more accessible in population genetics. Furthermore, an expansion of the options for Shannon Diversity analysis is currently in progress for a future release of GenAlEx.
A number of bug fixes and other minor improvements including additional Stats menu options such as U-tests and G-tests are also provided in this release.
Coinciding with the release of GenAlEx 6.3, we are also pleased to make available a series of self-paced tutorials on population genetic analysis using GenAlEx. These tutorials are based on material we have prepared to support our various graduate workshops.
We would like to thank the many students who attended our graduate workshops in Canberra (Australia) and Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2009 for beta testing GenAlEx 6.3 and suggesting improvements to our tutorials. We also thank Bill Sherwin for working closely with us in the development of the new Shannon option.
Rod Peakall and Peter Smouse Dec 2009
GenAlEx and Macintosh Compatibility
Please note that GenAlEx is not compatible with Office 2008 on the Macintosh. Unfortunately, Microsoft no longer support the macro language Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) used to write GenAlEx . This means any Excel Add-ins including GenAlEx no longer run in Office 2008. The good news is that in the response to the many unhappy customers, rumours indicate Microsoft will bring VBA back to the Mac in future versions of Excel.
(see http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/05/13.2.shtml)
Meanwhile, the options for Mac users are either: 1. keep Office 2004 on your Mac, 2. run GenAlEx within Office 2007 in Windows on an Intel Mac, or 3. Run GenAlEx on a PC. Note that VBA applications like GenAlEx have always run considerably faster in Windows so options 2 or 3 will be faster especially for larger data sets.
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