Yet again, a new version of an important piece of software for molecular ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and biogeographers has just become available. Mary Kuhner and colleagues have just released a new version of the software program Lamarc, a program that originally only implemented likelihood analysis but now implements ML and Bayesian algorithms for estimating population migration rates (gene flow), population sizes, exponential growth rates and recombination rates. You can download the most up-to-date version of Lamarc, Lamarc v2.1.9, from the corresponding Lamarc download website, which can be found here. I have found that some people have switched to Peter Beerli’s software program Migrate-n to estimate gene flow levels between populations and species, and to test different migration models (e.g. biogeographic hypotheses) in a Bayesian framework, using Bayes factors. However, Lamarc does several things well, and has recently (in the literature I read, at least) maintained its popularity for estimating population growth rates, g, which provides a nice complement to other analyses for inferring the historical demography of populations. For example, a positive g estimate can support an inference of a recent (on-going, or postglacial) population expansion from a group of molecular DNA sequences from present-day samples.
~J