In a message dated 8/24/2011 2:14:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, pconroy63@gmail.com writes: Here is a must read supplementary data spreadsheet, which lays out the percentages of R1b and particularly R-L21 M222+ per country and/or region: _http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/suppl/2011/08/18/rspb.2011.1 044.DC1_ (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/suppl/2011/08/18/rspb.2011.1044.DC1) It looks like most of the Irish data from the original Trinity study plus haplotypes from Ysearch used by the Balaresque study. Even though they used Ysearch samples the Balaresque study used only 9 STRS. The Trinity study of course used 17. The authors say "we independently re-sampled the Moore et al. dataset 10 000 times, selecting sub-samples of 75 haplotypes from which we estimated the variance using the same nine STRs used in the Balaresque paper. I wonder how they did that? We observed that the Irish haplotypes used in the Balaresque analysis had a very low STR variance (0.208) compared with those included in our analysis (0.35; originally published by Moore et al. [38]). Balaresque used a sample of Irish haplotypes downloaded from the online Ysearch database (_http://www.ysearch_ (http://www.ysearch) . org). To test if the Ysearch haplotypes were representative of the Irish R-M269 of Moore et al. [38], we independently resampled the Moore et al. dataset 10 000 times, selecting sub-samples of 75 haplotypes from which we estimated the variance using the same nine STRs used in the Balaresque paper (detailed methodology and justification can be found in the electronic supplementary material). The median variance of these 10 000 repetitions was 0.354 with a 95 per cent CI of (0.285– 0.432). When we repeated the regression analysis with this different variance estimate, the correlation was no longer significant (R2 ¼ 0.09, p ¼ 0.19). Testing the variance calculations from the Irish population Balaresque et al used haplotypes downloaded from the online Ysearch database (_http://www.ysearch.org_ (http://www.ysearch.org) ) which is a repository for genetic genealogists to upload and compare haplotypes (P. Balaresque pers. comm.). We note, however, that 17-STR haplotypes, including the 9 STRs used in Balaresque et al’s analysis, are available for 681 Irish R-M269 derived individuals in Moore et al (3), which is, in fact, the study which Balaresque et al use to estimate R-M269 frequency in Ireland. A subset of the Moore et al samples were re-analysed in the current study for SNPs downstream of R-M269, and the original haplotype data are used here to calculate variance. It seems the English data came from their own study and Myres et al. Figure S1 shows the positions of populations used, both from the current study and Myres et al (1). Three English populations were generated by combining data between the two studies, where they came from the same area and the resultant population was greater than 30: North- West England (ENG-NW); South-West England (ENG-SW); and South-East England (ENGSE). Two additional populations were made by combining populations within the Myres et al dataset: South-East Denmark (DEN-SE) and Switzerland (SWI-SC). I don't see a reference to the Scottish data but the Capelli census of the British Isles is footnoted. The Sykes database is out there too. Both are only 6-7 marker sets. The Myres et al supplementary spreadsheet shows only 24 M222 samples, 6 from England, 16 from Ireland, which of course does not equal 24. They list 9 markers. It appears they are relying on SNP tests. Mostly this looks like samples that have been around for a while in various studies. The academics are still using skimpy haplotypes. Paul did some nice working putting all the figures together. I don't know if there is any mapping software that could show the results graphically. John