Regenerative partition structures

We consider Kingman's partition structures which are regenerative with respect to a general operation of random deletion of some part. Prototypes of this class are the Ewens partition structures which Kingman characterised by regeneration after deletion of a part chosen by size-biased sampling. We associate each regenerative partition structure with a corresponding regenerative composition structure, which (as we showed in a previous paper) can be associated in turn with a regenerative random subset of the positive halfline, that is the closed range of a subordinator. A general regenerative partition structure is thus represented in terms of the Laplace exponent of an associated subordinator. We also analyse deletion properties characteristic of the two-parameter family of partition structures

The structure of the allelic partition of the total population for Galton-Watson processes with neutral mutations

We consider a (sub) critical Galton-Watson process with neutral mutations (infinite alleles model), and decompose the entire population into clusters of individuals carrying the same allele. We specify the law of this allelic partition in terms of the distribution of the number of clone-children and the number of mutant-children of a typical individual. The approach combines an extension of Harris representation of Galton-Watson processes and a version of the ballot theorem. Some limit theorems related to the distribution of the allelic partition are also given.Comment: This version corrects a significant mistake in the first on