Estimating species colonization dates using DNA in lake sediment

1. Detection of DNA in lake sediments holds promise as a tool to study processes like extinction, colonization, adaptation and evolutionary divergence. However, low concentrations make sediment DNA difficult to detect, leading to high false negative rates. Additionally, contamination could potentially lead to high false positive rates. Careful laboratory procedures can reduce false positive and negative rates, but should not be assumed to completely eliminate them. Therefore, methods are needed that identify potential false positive and negative results, and use this information to judge the plausibility of different interpretations of DNA data from natural archives. 2. We developed a Bayesian algorithm to infer the colonization history of a species using records of DNA from lake-sediment cores, explicitly labelling some observations as false positive or false negative. We illustrate the method by analysing DNA of whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus. L) from sediment cores covering the past ...