pedantics: an r package for pedigree-based genetic simulation and pedigree manipulation, characterization and viewing.

Analyses of pedigrees and pedigree-derived parameters (e.g. relatedness and fitness) provide some of the most informative types of studies in evolutionary biology. The r package pedantics implements tools to facilitate power and sensitivity analyses of pedigree-related studies of natural populations. Functions are available to permute pedigree data in various ways with the goal of mimicking patterns of pedigree errors and missingness that occur in studies of natural populations. Another set of functions simulates genetic and phenotypic data based on arbitrary pedigrees. Finally, functions are also available with which visual and numerical representations of pedigree structure can be generated.