Fig. 1

Statistical simulation of variance of allele balance at different ploidy levels. a Allele balance histograms of 100,000 loci derived from 2n, 3n, 4n, and 8n datasets simulated to 100× whole-genome coverage. Downsampled allele balance histograms are presented in Additional file 1: Fig S1. b Variance of allele balance calculated for 2n to 8n ploidies, with coverages at 4×, 6×, 8×, and 10× to 100× in increments of 10. The simulated diploid can be discriminated from simulated polyploids at coverages over 10× (dashed line). Below 10×, variance of allele frequency begins to converge for all ploidies