delrious: a computer program designed to analyse molecular marker data and calculate delta and relatedness estimates with confidence

Abstract The computer program delrious analyses molecular marker data and calculates delta and relatedness estimates. A computer simulation is presented in which delrious is used to determine relations between relatedness estimate confidence and locus number. The results obtained suggest that many kinship studies probably have been conducted at significance levels less than 95%. Confidence measures provide a means of assessing reliability of calculated parameters and, therefore, would be beneficial to kinship hypothesis testing. Consequently, resampling procedures should be conducted routinely to determine delta and relatedness estimate confidence. delrious can implement bootstrap and jackknife resampling procedures for this purpose.