The Quetzal Coalescence template library: a C++ programmers resource for integrating distributional, demographic and coalescent models.

BACKGROUND: Genetic samples can be used to understand and predict the behavior of species living in a fragmented and temporally changing environment. To this aim, models of coalescence conditioned to environment through an explicit modeling of population growth and migration have been developed in the past years, and simulators implementing these models have been developed, enabling biologists to estimate parameters of interest with Approximate Bayesian Computation techniques. However, model choice is still limited, and developing new coalescence simulators is extremely time consuming because code reuse is limited.

RESULTS: We present Quetzal, a C++ library composed of reusable components, general enough to efficiently implement a wide range of spatially-explicit coalescence-based environmental models of population genetics and to embed the simulation in an Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) framework. Quetzal is not a simulation program, but a toolbox for programming simulators aimed at the community of scientific coders and research software engineers in molecular ecology and phylogeography. This new code resource is open-source and available at https://becheler.github.io/pages/quetzal.html along with other documentation resources. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.