A new method for ecologists to estimate heterozygote excess and deficit for multi-locus gene families.

The fixation index, , has been a staple measure to detect selection, or departures from random mating in populations. However, current Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) cannot easily estimate , in multi-locus gene families that contain multiple loci having similar or identical arrays of variant sequences of ≥1 kilobase (kb), which differ at multiple positions. In these families, high-quality short-read NGS data typically identify variants, but not the genomic location, which is required to calculate (based on locus-specific observed and expected heterozygosity).