Corridors for migration between large subdivided populations, and the structured coalescent.

We study the ancestral genetic process for samples from two large, subdivided populations that are connected by migration to, from, and within a small set of subpopulations, or demes. We consider convergence to an ancestral limit process as the numbers of demes in the two large, subdivided populations tend to infinity. We show that the ancestral limit process for a sample includes a recent instantaneous adjustment to the sample size and structure followed by a more ancient process that is identical to the usual structured coalescent, but with different scaled parameters. This justifies the application of a modified structured coalescent to some hierarchically structured populations.