PReFerSim: fast simulation of demography and selection under the Poisson Random Field model

The Poisson Random Field (PRF) model has become an important tool in population genetics to study weakly deleterious genetic variation under complicated demographic scenarios. Currently, there are no freely available software applications that allow simulation of genetic variation data under this model. Here we present PReFerSim, an ANSI C program that performs forward simulations under the PRF model. PReFerSim models changes in population size, arbitrary amounts of inbreeding, dominance and distributions of selective effects. Users can track summaries of genetic variation over time and output trajectories of selected alleles.