Hi everyone. We would like to announce the release of SLiM 2.0, a forward genetic simulation package (http://messerlab.org/slim/). Its features include:
- complete scriptability of simulations, allowing immense flexibility and power - interactive development and execution of simulations in a graphical user interface, SLiMgui - support for complex genetic structure, population structure, types of selection, mating systems, etc., etc. Because of its scriptability, you can do pretty much whatever you can write in a script. The manual we’ve written for SLiM gives example "recipes" for all kinds of models, such as: - a model of human evolutionary history (following Gravel et al. 2011) - a model of a CRISPR/Cas9 "gene drive" sweeping through a linear island chain - a model of social learning of a culturally inherited trait that influences fitness - a model of gametophytic self-incompatibility and S-locus evolution in plants - a model of fixation probabilities under Hill-Robertson interference And on and on; you can really do almost anything, because of the flexibility of its scripting language, and you can see each model's dynamics unfolding graphically as it runs in SLiMgui. SLiM is open source, and runs on Mac OS X and Linux (although the SLiMgui graphical user interface runs only on Mac OS X). For more info, you can: - Read a blog post about it at http://ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2016/04/announcing-slim-20-flexible-fast.html - Download it from http://messerlab.org/slim/ We hope people find this useful, both in research and in the classroom! Cheers, Ben Haller and Philipp Messer Cornell University
