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ldsep: Linkage Disequilibrium Shrinkage Estimation for Polyploids

Estimate haplotypic or composite pairwise linkage disequilibrium (LD) in polyploids, using either genotypes or genotype likelihoods. Support is provided to estimate the popular measures of LD: the LD coefficient $D$, the standardized LD coefficient $D'$, and the Pearson correlation coefficient $r$. All estimates are returned with corresponding standard errors. These estimates and standard errors can then be used for shrinkage estimation. The methods are described in Gerard (2021a) and Gerard (2021b).

The main functions are:

  • ldfast(): Fast, moment-based approach to estimate pairwise LD in the presence of genotype uncertainty.
  • ldest(): Estimates pairwise LD via maximum likelihood.
  • mldest(): Iteratively apply ldest() across many pairs of SNPs.
  • sldest(): Iteratively apply ldest() along a sliding window of fixed length.
  • plot.lddf(): Plot method for the output of mldest() and sldest().
  • format_lddf(): Format the output of mldest() and sldest() into a matrix.
  • ldshrink(): Shrink correlation estimates using adaptive shrinkage (Stephens, 2017; Dey and Stephens, 2018).

Installation

You can install the released version of ldsep from CRAN with:

install.packages("ldsep")

And the development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("dcgerard/ldsep")

Citation

To cite ldsep in publications use:

Gerard, David (2021). “Pairwise Linkage Disequilibrium Estimation for Polyploids.” Molecular Ecology Resources, 21(4), 1230–1242. doi:10.1111/1755-0998.13349.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

@Article{,
  title = {Pairwise Linkage Disequilibrium Estimation for Polyploids},
  author = {David Gerard},
  journal = {Molecular Ecology Resources},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1111/1755-0998.13349},
  volume = {21},
  number = {4},
  pages = {1230--1242},
}

If you use ldfast(), please cite:

Gerard, David (2021). “Scalable Bias-corrected Linkage Disequilibrium Estimation Under Genotype Uncertainty.” Heredity, 127(4), 357–362. doi:10.1038/s41437-021-00462-5.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

@Article{,
  title = {Scalable Bias-corrected Linkage Disequilibrium Estimation Under Genotype Uncertainty},
  author = {David Gerard},
  journal = {Heredity},
  year = {2021},
  volume = {127},
  number = {4},
  pages = {357--362},
  doi = {10.1038/s41437-021-00462-5},
}

Code of Conduct

Please note that the ldsep project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

References

  • Dey, Kushal K., and Matthew Stephens (2018). “CorShrink: Empirical Bayes shrinkage estimation of correlations, with applications.” bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/368316

  • Gerard, David (2021a). “Pairwise Linkage Disequilibrium Estimation for Polyploids.” Molecular Ecology Resources, 21(4), 1230–1242. doi:10.1111/1755-0998.13349.

  • Gerard, David (2021b). “Scalable Bias-corrected Linkage Disequilibrium Estimation Under Genotype Uncertainty.” Heredity, 127(4), 357–362. doi:10.1038/s41437-021-00462-5.

  • Stephens, Matthew (2017). “False discovery rates: a new deal.” Biostatistics 18(2), 275–294. doi:10.1093/biostatistics/kxw041

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Version

Install

install.packages('ldsep')

Monthly Downloads

458

Version

2.1.6

License

GPL (>= 3)

Maintainer

David Gerard

Last Published

September 18th, 2025

Functions in ldsep (2.1.6)

slcor

Sliding window correlation
ldshrink

Obtain shrinkage estimates of correlation from output of mldest() or sldest().
pvcalc

Calculate prior variances from a matrix of prior genotype probabilities.
sldest

Sliding window LD estimation
uit

Updog fits on the data from Uitdewilligen et. al. (2013)
ldfast

Fast bias-correction for LD Estimation
pbnorm_dist

Returns distribution of proportional bivariate normal.
mldest

Estimate all pair-wise LD's in a collection of SNPs using genotypes or genotype likelihoods.
ldsep-package

ldsep: Linkage Disequilibrium Shrinkage Estimation for Polyploids
zshrink

Shrinks Fisher-z transformed correlation estimates and returns resulting correlation estimates.
plot.lddf

gl_to_gp

Normalize genotype likelihoods to posterior probabilities.
format_lddf

Format an element of mldest() or sldest() into an upper-triangular matrix.
is.lddf

Tests if an argument is a lddf object.
ldest_comp

Estimates of composite pairwise LD based either on genotype estimates or genotype likelihoods.
Dprime

Get the standardized composite D'.
glike

Genotype log-likelihoods from uit
ldest_hap

Estimate haplotypic pair-wise LD using either genotypes or genotype likelihoods.
get_prob_array

Obtain the distribution of genotypes given haplotype frequencies under HWE
ldest

Pairwise LD estimation in polyploids.
gp

Posterior probabilities from uit