MARLIN, software to create, run, and analyse spatially realistic simulations.

MARLIN is a software to create, run, analyse, and visualize spatially explicit population genetic simulations. It provides an intuitive user interface with which the geographical layout of a metapopulation can be drawn by hand or loaded from a map. Furthermore, the interface allows easy selection of the many different simulation settings. MARLIN then uses the program QuantiNemo to run the simulation in the background. When simulations are finished, MARLIN directly analyses and plots the results, thereby greatly simplifying the simulation workflow. This combination of simulation and analysis makes MARLIN ideal for teaching and for scientists who are interested in doing simulations without having to learn command-line operations. MARLIN is available for computers running Mac OS X and can be downloaded from: http://www.patrickmeirmans.com/software.