vcfpop: performing population genetics analyses for autopolyploids and aneuploids based on next-generation sequencing datasets.

Polyploids are cells or organisms with a genome consisting of more than two sets of homologous chromosomes. Polyploid plants have important traits that facilitate speciation and are thus often model systems for evolutionary, molecular ecology and agricultural studies. However, due to their unusual mode of inheritance and double-reduction, diploid models of population genetic analysis cannot properly be applied to autopolyploids. To overcome this problem, we developed a software package entitled vcfpop to perform a variety of population genetic analyses for autopolyploids, such as parentage analysis, analysis of molecular variance, principal coordinates analysis, hierarchical clustering analysis and Bayesian clustering. We use three datasets to evaluate the capability of vcfpop to analyze large datasets on a desktop computer. This software is freely available at http://github.com/huangkang1987/vcfpop.