Scans genomes for natural selection with SFS tests (Tajima's D, Fay & Wu H, Zeng E, SweepFinder2 CLR), haplotype tests (iHS, nSL, XP-EHH, Rsb, H12), and differentiation (FST, PBS) using scikit-allel, selscan, and SweepFinder2. No single statistic separates selection from demography at one locus, so the deliverable is empirical genome-wide outliers plus multiple orthogonal signals, not an absolute cutoff. iHS detects incomplete sweeps and collapses to zero at fixation while XP-EHH catches fixed sweeps; iHS/nSL standardize within derived-allele-frequency bins but XP-EHH gets a genome-wide z-score; derived-allele tests need substitution-model polarization; background selection mimics FST and CLR. Use when computing selection statistics like FST, Tajima's D, iHS, or XP-EHH, or scanning for selective sweeps. For phasing inputs see phasing-imputation/haplotype-phasing; for dN/dS see comparative-genomics/positive-selection.
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Scans genomes for natural selection with SFS tests (Tajima's D, Fay & Wu H, Zeng E, SweepFinder2 CLR), haplotype tests (iHS, nSL, XP-EHH, Rsb, H12), and differentiation (FST, PBS) using scikit-allel, selscan, and SweepFinder2. No single statistic separates selection from demography at one locus, so the deliverable is empirical genome-wide outliers plus multiple orthogonal signals, not an absolute cutoff. iHS detects incomplete sweeps and collapses to zero at fixation while XP-EHH catches fixed sweeps; iHS/nSL standardize within derived-allele-frequency bins but XP-EHH gets a genome-wide z-score; derived-allele tests need substitution-model polarization; background selection mimics FST and CLR. Use when computing selection statistics like FST, Tajima's D, iHS, or XP-EHH, or scanning for selective sweeps. For phasing inputs see phasing-imputation/haplotype-phasing; for dN/dS see comparative-genomics/positive-selection.
Before using code patterns, verify installed versions match. If versions differ:
Python: pip show <package> then help(module.function) to check signatures
CLI: <tool> --version then <tool> --help to confirm flags
If code throws ImportError, AttributeError, or TypeError, introspect the installed
package and adapt the example to match the actual API rather than retrying.
Version traps that change results, not just syntax: allel.standardize_by_allele_count(score, aac, ...) is for iHS and nSL (it bins by derived-allele count), while XP-EHH and iHH12 use plain genome-wide allel.standardize(score); conflating them is a real bug. allel.nsl(h) takes no pos/map_pos (nSL is map-free by construction) whereas allel.ihs(h, pos, map_pos=...) distorts without a genetic map. selscan 2.0 adds --unphased for multilocus genotypes; selscan 1.x requires phased haplotypes. The single source of truth for versions is this block, not headings.
Selection Statistics
"Scan my population for signatures of natural selection" -> Contrast each locus against the genome-wide neutral expectation that already carries the demographic history, using statistics that read complementary features of a sweep.
CLI: selscan --ihs|--xpehh|--nsl then norm for standardization; SweepFinder2 -lrb for CLR with a background-selection map
Scope: selection-scan DESIGN - SFS neutrality tests, haplotype/EHH sweep statistics, differentiation outliers (FST, PBS), CLR scans, and polygenic Qx, with standardization and demography-aware outlier interpretation. PCA/ADMIXTURE population assignment routes to population-structure; LD/EHH mechanics to linkage-disequilibrium; the scikit-allel array-API mechanics (signatures, accessibility masks, data loading) to scikit-allel-analysis; phasing to phasing-imputation/haplotype-phasing; dN/dS and McDonald-Kreitman to comparative-genomics/positive-selection.
The Single Most Important Insight -- no single statistic separates selection from demography at one locus
A bottleneck removes variation genome-wide and skews the SFS toward rare variants exactly as a sweep does, so a single Tajima's D cannot tell them apart; recent expansion gives genome-wide negative D that mimics a post-sweep signal, and population structure gives positive D that mimics balancing selection.
The field's response is structural, not statistical: rank windows and flag empirical genome-wide OUTLIERS (the bulk absorbs the shared demography), intersect MULTIPLE ORTHOGONAL signals (a sweep distorts haplotype, SFS, diversity, and differentiation together while each confound acts differently), and calibrate against an explicit demographic-model SIMULATION (dadi/momi/fastsimcoal2 + msprime/SLiM).
iHS and nSL detect INCOMPLETE/ongoing sweeps and collapse to ~0 once the allele fixes; XP-EHH and Rsb catch FIXED/near-fixed sweeps by borrowing a second population, so they are COMPLEMENTARY not redundant (high XP-EHH with near-zero iHS is the textbook completed-sweep signature).
An absolute cutoff such as "Tajima's D < -2 means a sweep" is wrong by construction; -2 means nothing without the genome-wide context, which is why the entire skill is outlier-based.
local SFS vs empirical background; localizes target; -lrb deconfounds BGS
no
SFS-CLR
SweeD, OmegaPlus
Pavlidis 2013; Alachiotis 2012
parallel CLR; LD-shoulder omega
no
Haplotype
iHS (allel.ihs, selscan --ihs)
Voight 2006
INCOMPLETE sweeps; standardize by DAF bin
YES
Haplotype
nSL (allel.nsl, selscan --nsl)
Ferrer-Admetlla 2014
incomplete hard+soft; map-free
YES
Haplotype
XP-EHH (allel.xpehh, selscan --xpehh)
Sabeti 2007
FIXED/near-fixed sweeps; genome-wide z-score
YES
Haplotype
Rsb
Tang 2007
XP-EHH niche; iES ratio
YES
Haplotype
H12 / H2H1 (allel.garud_h)
Garud 2015
SOFT sweeps; hard-vs-soft tendency
YES
Differentiation
FST (allel.hudson_fst, allel.weir_cockerham_fst)
Weir & Cockerham 1984; Bhatia 2013
local-adaptation divergence
no
Differentiation
PBS
Yi 2010
which branch the divergence is on (3 pops)
no
Polygenic
Qx
Berg & Coop 2014
over-dispersed polygenic scores across pops
no
Decision Tree by Scenario
Scenario
Use
Why
Localized recent sweep, ongoing/incomplete, one population, genetic map available
iHS
reads the frequency contrast between long derived and short ancestral haplotypes
Same but no reliable genetic map
nSL
integrates over segregating-site count; map-free, robust to recombination-rate variation
Sweep complete/fixed in one of two populations
XP-EHH or Rsb
maximum power exactly where iHS is blind (no within-population contrast remains)
Selection on standing variation (soft sweep)
H12 / H2H1
collapses co-rising haplotypes; hard-sweep stats lose power
Localize the target with a demographic/BGS model
SweepFinder2 CLR (-lrb) or SweeD; OmegaPlus
empirical background SFS as null; B-value map deconfounds background selection
Differentiation outliers, unequal sample sizes
FST Hudson estimator + PBS for 3 pops
Hudson is robust to unequal n; PBS localizes the branch
Quick SFS reconnaissance
windowed Tajima's D + pi + Fay & Wu H (substitution-model polarization)
cheap, but never an absolute cutoff
Polygenic trait shift across populations
Qx with within-family GWAS effect sizes only
sweep scans are blind to coordinated tiny shifts; standard GWAS betas carry stratification bias
Ancient/recurrent coding selection across species
hand off to comparative-genomics/positive-selection
dN/dS and MK are a different timescale, not a within-population sweep
FST and PBS - Differentiation
Goal: Quantify allele-frequency divergence between populations and flag local-adaptation candidates without being fooled by rare variants or unequal samples.
Approach: Count alleles per subpopulation, compute the Hudson estimator per SNP, and report mean FST as a ratio-of-averages over windows after an MAF filter (rare variants deflate FST, Bhatia 2013).
PBS (Population Branch Statistic, Yi 2010) needs three populations: convert three pairwise FST values to branch lengths via T = -log(1 - FST) and isolate the focal branch as PBS = (T_12 + T_13 - T_23) / 2. A long focal branch in a small/bottlenecked population can be drift, not selection.
iHS and nSL - Within-Population Incomplete Sweeps
Goal: Detect ongoing sweeps from extended haplotype homozygosity around derived core alleles.
Approach: Filter to segregating biallelic SNPs, compute the raw integrated-EHH score, then standardize WITHIN derived-allele-frequency bins (the raw score depends strongly on derived frequency and is uninterpretable unbinned).
import allel
import numpy as np
h = gt.to_haplotypes()
ac = h.count_alleles()
flt = (ac[:, 0] > 1) & (ac[:, 1] > 1)
h_flt, pos_flt, ac_flt = h.compress(flt, axis=0), pos[flt], ac.compress(flt, axis=0)
# iHS needs a genetic map (map_pos) where recombination rate varies; physical distance distorts iHH.
ihs_raw = allel.ihs(h_flt, pos_flt, min_maf=0.05, include_edges=True)
# Standardize WITHIN derived-allele-count bins (NOT genome-wide) - the most common iHS bug.
ihs_std, _ = allel.standardize_by_allele_count(ihs_raw, ac_flt[:, 1])
ihs_outlier = np.abs(ihs_std) > 2# nSL: map-free (no pos/map_pos), robust to recombination-rate variation; still bin-standardized.
nsl_raw = allel.nsl(h_flt)
nsl_std, _ = allel.standardize_by_allele_count(nsl_raw, ac_flt[:, 1])
A null iHS does NOT mean no selection: once the derived allele fixes, the ancestral haplotype is gone and iHS collapses to zero. Switch to XP-EHH/Rsb for completed sweeps. Report the windowed PROPORTION of |iHS|>2 SNPs, not single noisy hits.
XP-EHH - Cross-Population Completed Sweeps
Goal: Catch fixed or near-fixed sweeps in one of two populations, where within-population haplotype tests are blind.
Approach: Compute the cross-population integrated-EHH ratio on shared positions, then apply a plain GENOME-WIDE z-score (XP-EHH is not strongly correlated with derived frequency, so frequency-bin standardization is the wrong rule).
import allel
import numpy as np
h1 = h_flt.take(pop1_hap_idx, axis=1)
h2 = h_flt.take(pop2_hap_idx, axis=1)
xpehh_raw = allel.xpehh(h1, h2, pos_flt, include_edges=True)
# Genome-wide z-score for XP-EHH/iHH12 - NOT standardize_by_allele_count (that is for iHS/nSL).
xpehh_std = allel.standardize(xpehh_raw)
completed_sweep = np.abs(xpehh_std) > 2
A shared ancestral sweep at the same locus in BOTH populations cancels in the contrast (false negative). Differential phasing quality between the two populations systematically biases the difference statistic.
H12 - Soft Sweeps
Goal: Recover sweeps on standing variation that iHS and CLR miss because no single long haplotype dominates.
Approach: Compute Garud's H over haplotype-frequency spectra; H12 collapses the two most common haplotypes into one, and H2/H1 tends (not classifies) toward hard-vs-soft.
h1, h12, h123, h2_h1 = allel.garud_h(h_flt)
h12_win = allel.moving_garud_h(h_flt, size=100) # SNP-count windows, not bp
SFS-CLR with selscan and SweepFinder2
# selscan haplotype scans (phased VCF + genetic map), then norm for standardization.
selscan --ihs --vcf phased.vcf --map genetic.map --out scan # within-pop incomplete sweeps
selscan --xpehh --vcf pop1.vcf --vcf-ref pop2.vcf --map genetic.map --out xp # completed sweeps
selscan --nsl --vcf phased.vcf --out nsl_scan # no map; map-free
selscan --ihs --unphased --vcf unphased.vcf --map genetic.map --out scan_unphased # selscan 2.0 multilocus-genotype# norm bins iHS/nSL by derived-allele frequency (--bins default 100); XP-EHH/iHH12 get a genome-wide z-score.
norm --ihs --files scan.ihs.out --bins 100
norm --xpehh --files xp.xpehh.out
# SweepFinder2 CLR: build a genome-WIDE background SFS, then scan with recombination + B-value (BGS) map.
SweepFinder2 -f genome.freq genome.spect # empirical background spectrum# -lrb takes N1 (current ingroup Ne), N2 (ancestral Ne), T (divergence time in generations) before OutFile.
SweepFinder2 -lrb 2000 region.freq genome.spect region.rec bvalue.map "$N1""$N2""$T" out.clr # G=2000 grid; -lrb deconfounds BGS
Polarization and Polygenic Selection
Derived-allele tests (Fay & Wu H, Zeng E, unfolded SFS, the iHS sign) are POLARIZATION traps: one mispolarized CpG site masquerades as a high-frequency-derived variant and fakes a strongly negative H. Polarize with a probabilistic substitution model and two or more outgroups (Hernandez 2007), never a single chimp allele. Conservation scores (phyloP, GERP, phastCons) measure CONSTRAINT (purifying selection), the opposite sign of a recent positive sweep, and must not be read as "under selection." Polygenic Qx (Berg & Coop 2014) inherits every stratification bias in the GWAS effect sizes it uses: the celebrated European height-selection signal was shown to be a stratification artifact (Sohail 2019; Berg 2019), so use within-family/sibling effect estimates and treat standard-GWAS-beta Qx as provisional.
Per-Method Failure Modes
Absolute Tajima's D cutoff
Trigger: flagging windows on |D|>2 as selection. Mechanism: growth/bottleneck/structure produce the same sign as a sweep/balancing selection (non-identifiable at one locus). Symptom: genome-wide false positives that are pure demography. Fix: use the genome-wide empirical distribution and intersect orthogonal statistics; report D relative to the genomic background.
Unstandardized or mis-standardized iHS
Trigger: reporting raw iHS, or applying a genome-wide z-score to iHS. Mechanism: raw iHH ratio depends strongly on derived-allele frequency. Symptom: uninterpretable scores, false tails at particular frequencies. Fix:standardize_by_allele_count (DAF bins) for iHS/nSL; reserve standardize (genome-wide) for XP-EHH/iHH12.
iHS null read as no-selection
Trigger: concluding neutrality from absent iHS signal. Mechanism: a completed sweep fixes the derived allele, erasing the within-population contrast iHS needs. Symptom: real fixed sweeps missed. Fix: add XP-EHH/Rsb against a second population for completed sweeps.
Single-outgroup polarization
Trigger: deriving ancestral state from one chimp allele for H/E/unfolded SFS. Mechanism: recurrent mutation at CpG/hypermutable sites biases the single-allele ancestral estimator. Symptom: spurious strongly-negative Fay & Wu H (fake sweep). Fix: substitution-model polarization with >=2 outgroups (Hernandez 2007; est-sfs).
Background selection as sweep
Trigger: reading an FST or CLR peak in a low-recombination region as positive selection. Mechanism: purifying selection against linked deleterious variants reduces local diversity. Symptom: FST/PBS/CLR peaks with no positive selection. Fix: supply SweepFinder2 a B-value map (-lrb); control for recombination rate; treat low-recombination outliers with suspicion.
Switch error in haplotype stats
Trigger: EHH statistics on poorly phased data. Mechanism: a switch error truncates long haplotypes and deflates EHH. Symptom: iHS/nSL/XP-EHH biased toward null; XP-EHH biased by differential phasing between populations. Fix: read-backed/high-quality phasing (see phasing-imputation/haplotype-phasing), or selscan 2.0 --unphased multilocus-genotype mode.
Polygenic Qx on stratified GWAS betas
Trigger: running Qx on standard meta-analysis effect sizes. Mechanism: residual population stratification correlates effect sizes with ancestry axes. Symptom: spurious polygenic-adaptation clines (the height story). Fix: within-family/sibling effect sizes; treat PC-corrected meta-analysis betas as insufficient.
Quantitative Thresholds
Quantity
Typical value
Rationale
iHS / nSL flag
|standardized score| > 2
~top 2.5% two-sided of N(0,1); an empirical convention, NOT a calibrated p-value (Voight 2006)
Empirical outlier tail
top 1% (top 0.1% for stringency)
genome-wide bulk absorbs demography; percentile is a sensitivity/specificity tradeoff, not an alpha
iHS/nSL standardization
within derived-allele-frequency bins (selscan --bins 100)
raw score is frequency-dependent; binning makes scores comparable
XP-EHH/iHH12 standardization
genome-wide z-score
not frequency-correlated; bin-standardizing inverts the rule
Window size
10-100 kb, 50% step (scale to LD decay)
wide enough for stable SFS estimates, narrow enough to localize
Haplotype-stat MAF
drop core alleles MAF < ~0.05
EHH on singletons is undefined/uninformative (min_maf=0.05)
SweepFinder2 grid G
finer than expected sweep width (~1-2 kb in humans)
coarse grids step over narrow sweeps; significance from demographic-model simulation
FST mean
ratio-of-averages, MAF-filtered, Hudson estimator
rare variants deflate FST; arithmetic mean of per-SNP ratios is biased (Bhatia 2013)
Thresholds are conventions, not laws - inspect distributions and calibrate against a demographic-model simulation or the genome-wide empirical tail before quoting any number.
Common Errors
Error / symptom
Cause
Solution
"D < -2 = sweep"
absolute cutoff ignoring demography
use the genome-wide empirical tail; D sign never identifies cause
Zeng K, Fu YX, Shi S, Wu CI. Statistical tests for detecting positive selection by utilizing high-frequency variants. Genetics 2006; 174(3):1431-1439.
DeGiorgio M, Huber CD, Hubisz MJ, Hellmann I, Nielsen R. SweepFinder2: increased sensitivity, robustness and flexibility. Bioinformatics 2016; 32(12):1895-1897.
Voight BF, Kudaravalli S, Wen X, Pritchard JK. A map of recent positive selection in the human genome. PLoS Biology 2006; 4(3):e72.
Sabeti PC, Varilly P, Fry B, et al. Genome-wide detection and characterization of positive selection in human populations. Nature 2007; 449(7164):913-918.
Ferrer-Admetlla A, Liang M, Korneliussen T, Nielsen R. On detecting incomplete soft or hard selective sweeps using haplotype structure. Molecular Biology and Evolution 2014; 31(5):1275-1291.
Garud NR, Messer PW, Buzbas EO, Petrov DA. Recent selective sweeps in North American Drosophila melanogaster show signatures of soft sweeps. PLoS Genetics 2015; 11(2):e1005004.
Yi X, Liang Y, Huerta-Sanchez E, et al. Sequencing of 50 human exomes reveals adaptation to high altitude. Science 2010; 329(5987):75-78.
Weir BS, Cockerham CC. Estimating F-statistics for the analysis of population structure. Evolution 1984; 38(6):1358-1370.
Bhatia G, Patterson N, Sankararaman S, Price AL. Estimating and interpreting FST: the impact of rare variants. Genome Research 2013; 23(9):1514-1521.
Hernandez RD, Williamson SH, Bustamante CD. Context dependence, ancestral misidentification, and spurious signatures of natural selection. Molecular Biology and Evolution 2007; 24(8):1792-1800.
Berg JJ, Coop G. A population genetic signal of polygenic adaptation. PLoS Genetics 2014; 10(8):e1004412.
Sohail M, Maier RM, Ganna A, et al. Polygenic adaptation on height is overestimated due to uncorrected stratification in genome-wide association studies. eLife 2019; 8:e39702.
Berg JJ, Harpak A, Sinnott-Armstrong N, et al. Reduced signal for polygenic adaptation of height in UK Biobank. eLife 2019; 8:e39725.
Related Skills
scikit-allel-analysis - genotype/haplotype array loading and allele-count basics
population-structure - PCA and ADMIXTURE for population assignment before FST/PBS
linkage-disequilibrium - EHH and LD mechanics underlying haplotype statistics
phasing-imputation/haplotype-phasing - phased haplotypes that all EHH statistics require
comparative-genomics/positive-selection - dN/dS and McDonald-Kreitman for recurrent coding selection
comparative-genomics/introgression-detection - archaic/admixture signals that confound differentiation outliers
