The day-to-day activities of the Cruwys/Cruse one-name study with occasional diversions into other topics of interest such as DNA testing and personal genomics
On 19th June AncestryDNA rolled out over 225 new communities for people with ancestry from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom and "French North America". These new communities are in addition to the 92 regions in Ireland that were introduced in January this year. If you have taken a DNA test with AncestryDNA and have ancestry from any of these places you will probably find that your results have been updated and that the regions are now more granular.
I previously had just one genetic community for Southern England with South-East England as a sub-region. I am now in the Central Southern England community and have two sub-regions: (1) Dorset and Somerset; (2) Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and West Oxfordshire. Here is a screenshot of my updated results.
My dad previously had two communities: (1) Southern England with East Anglia and Essex as a sub-region; (2) Wales and the West Midlands. My dad now has three communities: Central Southern England, Devon and Cornwall, and East of England. He does not yet have any sub-regions. Below is a screenshot of his updated results. Note that although Norway and Sweden appear in his "ethnicity" estimate he does not have any documented ancestry from either country in the last 400 years or so. I fully expect Norway and Sweden to disappear from his estimate the next time Ancestry update their reference populations.
My mum was previously in two communities: (1) Southern England with South East England as a sub-region; (2) Wales and the West Midlands. She is now in the Central Southern England community and has Dorset and Somerset has a sub-region. See below for a screenshot of my mum's updated results.
Previously it was possible to access the confidence score for each community/region. I can no longer find a way to do this. I hope this feature will eventually be restored. We also used to have the ability to filter matches by region. This option has now disappeared but I understand that there are plans to restore it.
For my family the results haven't changed too drastically but the new communities do provide a marginal improvement on the previous results and are a good reflection of some of our predominant ancestries. As more people test and more people are added to the genetic networks that form the basis of the communities we can expect the results to change over time. I imagine that it will eventually possible to break the results down into more individual counties.
Have you had some updated communities? What do you think of your results?
There have been a few changes at Ancestry DNA in the last few days. They've started to roll out a new presentation for their "ethnicity" reports and Genetic Communities. The two features are now integrated which makes them much easier to use. This is what my new home page looks like. The admixture percentages have not changed but I am encouraged to click through to view my DNA Story.
Here is my new DNA Story page. By default the low-confidence regions are not shown, but I've expanded them in this screenshot.
I currently have one Genetic Community for Southern England. That is now nested inside the Great Britain region.
The admixture component that was previously labelled Ireland has now been renamed as Ireland/Scotland/Wales. However, this component actually covers much of England as well, and overlaps with the Southern England Genetic Community, as can be seen below.
The timeline is now conveniently located at the bottom of the page. It's easy to click through and read the historical detail for the different periods. Here's my timeline from 1850 which shows the migrations of the people in my Southern England community. This is the era of peak emigration, particularly to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America, and it's fascinating to see how these connections are showing up in the DNA.
Some people are also seeing Migrations listed below their "ethnicity" report. This only applies if the person's genetic community is not part of their admixture regions.
AncestryDNA database now at six million and changes to the consent process
AncestryDNA have also announced that their database has reached six million. They had five million people in their database at the beginning of August 2017, which means they've added one million to their database in less than three months. The good news is that much of that growth has taken place in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
At the same time AncestryDNA have also made some changes to the DNA cousin-matching service, as described in this blog post. Most importantly, customers now have the ability to opt out of cousin matching, and new customers have to actively consent to participate in the relative-matching database. This is what the test settings now look like for existing customers.
This is the message you get if you want to change the settings for your DNA matches.
Here is the page in the activation process for new testers where you have to consent to "see and be seen" by your DNA matches.
This is what the home page now looks like if the tester decides not to opt in to matching. (Many thanks to Michelle Leonard for these two screenshots.)
This is a very welcome change, and I'm just surprised that it didn't happen sooner. This brings AncestryDNA into line with 23andMe and Family Tree DNA, both of whom require the tester to opt in to be included in the matching database.
I always warn my fellow genealogists to be prepared for the unexpected. With the growth in the DNA databases we are finding many examples of surprise DNA matches. Some people are getting unexpected matches with previously unknown close relatives, and sometimes even with unknown siblings and parents. Much of the focus of the AncestryDNA marketing campaigns has been on the admixture percentages, and this has helped to bring in a whole new demographic to DNA testing, many of whom have then been inspired to start researching their family tree. However, many of these people don't realise that the test also has a direct genealogical application and can be used for cousin matching. I've personally come across a couple of instances of people testing to get the admixture percentages and then finding by chance that they had an unknown parent or child in the database. These discoveries were made in the most inappropriate circumstances and the embarrassment could have been avoided if there had been a proper consent process in place at the time. It's important that everyone who participates in the DNA matching database understands what they are doing and that they are forewarned about the implications so that they can make their own choices based on their individual circumstances. Not everyone is willing or ready to discover unknown relatives and their wishes should be respected.
AncestryDNA's long awaited new Genetic Communities feature has finally been rolled out to everyone. I've had access to the Communities for some time as I've been involved in the beta testing programme but there have been a few updates to the presentation of the communities since I last wrote about the feature last week. This is what my AncestryDNA home page now looks like.
There is a link to a short video introducing the Genetic Communities which you can watch below. It makes a pleasant change to have a video which is specifically tailored to the UK market with someone talking in an English accent!
N.B. The above video is for the British and Irish market. There is a different video for the American market which can be found here.
When I click on "View Your Genetic Ancestry" this is what I see.
Th display of the "ethnicity" estimate has changed to clarify that this information relates to your genetic ancestry going back thousands of years, while the Genetic Communities provide an indication of your ancestry in the last couple of hundred years.
I currently have just one Genetic Community which is known as Southern English. This is what I see when I click through to visit my Southern English Community.
For each community there is a storyline where you can learn about the history of your community in the last few hundred years. Below is a close up of the details for my Southern English community from 1825-1850. This was a period when many people emigrated to start a new life in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. There is a cool map which uses the birthplaces of people in the community to show the emigration patterns.
In addition to the storylines there is another tab where you can view your connections within your community. This is what I see for my Southern English community.
There are 42 people in my community who also appear in my match list and I can now click through and view these matches from the community page. The surnames listed are all familiar English and Welsh surnames though none of these surnames actually appear in my tree. If you click on a surname you are taken to a page which gives you information about the surname and provides distribution maps of the surname in the various censuses. You are also encouraged to search for references to the surname in the Ancestry records.
The Genetic Communities can also be accessed directly from your match list. This is a very handy way of filtering your matches.
Other Genetic Communities
It is also possible to see a list of all the other Genetic Communities available. There are around 300 at the time of the launch with the promise of more to come. Here are the continents currently covered by the Genetic Communities.
There are further regions within each continent. Here is the breakdown of regions in Europe.
Each of those regions is broken down into further regions and sub-regions. There are nine communities for the UK and Ireland, some of which also have sub-regions. Here is the current list:
English Newfoundlanders
Southern English. This includes three sub-regions: English in the South West Peninsula, English in the South East, and English in East Anglia and Essex
Northern English
Scots. This includes four sub-regions: Scots in the Highlands and Eastern Nova Scotia, Scots in Northeast and Central Scotland, Scots in the Highlands and Nova Scotia, Scots in Central Scotland, and Northern Ireland
English Midlanders and Northerners. This includes three sub-regions: English in the West Midlands and Northwest England, English in Yorkshire and Pennines, and English in the East Midlands
The Welsh and English West Midlanders. This includes three sub-regions: North Walians, English in the West Midlands, and South Walians.
Ulster Irish. This includes five sub-regions: Irish in Donegal East, Irish in Donegal Southwest, Irish in Ulster East, Irish in the North Midlands, and Irish in Derry and Inishowen
Connacht Irish. This includes five sub-regions: Irish in Mayo and Galway, Irish in Galway, Irish in Connemara, Irish in North Connacht, and Irish in Mayo and Sligo,
Munster Irish. This includes six sub-regions: Irish in Southern Ireland, Irish in Cork, Irish in West Cork, Irish in Kerry, Irish in West Kerry, and Irish in Limerick and Kerry.
Although I am in the Southern English community I don't yet show up in any of three sub-communities though I imagine it's only a matter of time before this happens.
It's also very interesting reading through the historical background information about all the other Genetic Communities. We were taught very little about American and Canadian history at school so it's very useful to have a potted overview of emigration to these countries.
If you want to have a full list of all the Genetic Communities Blaine Bettinger has helpfully provided a complete list which you can download as a PDF file from his blog. See his blog post
AncestryDNA's Genetic Communities are finally here! for further details.
Most people I know are reporting that they have at least one community though there are some people who don't yet have any.
The science behind the Genetic Communities
The new feature has a sound scientific foundation. AncestryDNA have published a White Paper describing the methodology in more detail.
If you really want to dig more into the science behind the feature it's worth reading the paper Clustering of 770,000 genomes reveals post-colonial population structure of North America published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. This research provides the proof of concept for the feature. An overview of the paper is provided in the following two blog posts:
Verdict
This is a very exciting new feature and its value will grow over time as more people get tested. We can expect to see more communities added in the future and increasing regional resolution within the existing communities.
I already know from my genealogical research that most of my ancestry is from Southern England so this feature is not telling me anything I don't already know. However, the Genetic Communities have a very real practical application. One of the big problems for those of us who are not American is that our match list is dominated by Americans. Very few of my American matches have family trees that have identifiable locations in the UK, which makes it an impossible task ever trying to find the genealogical connection. It can be quite soul-destroying clicking through match after match only to find that every single ancestor is in Colonial Virginia or Maryland. The Genetic Communities filter provides me with a readymade list of the 42 people amongst my thousands of matches who actually have identifiable connections with Southern England and with whom I stand a much better chance of finding a genealogical link.
The Genetic Communities will be particularly helpful for people who are researching their Irish ancestry. Irish research is often difficult, and most people struggle to trace their trees back much beyond 1850 or 1800. There is also a huge Irish diaspora who are desperate to trace their roots to a specific region in Ireland. There is already an impressive level of sub-regional resolution within the Irish communities, and this feature could potentially have a big impact on Irish research.
For those who know nothing about their ancestry, such as foundlings, donor-conceived individuals and adoptees, the communities will provide valuable clues to inform their research and will provide them with focused lists of matches to search through.
As DNA testing is going mainstream many people are now testing out of curiosity purely for the admixture percentages. Although some of these people do become interested in genealogy and are encouraged to take out an Ancestry subscription, there are many others who sign in once to look at their results and don't come back. The Genetic Communities are provided free to everyone who tests with Ancestry, and the feature is likely to encourage people to spend more time looking at their results and learning about the history of their community. Hopefully they will also be inspired to contact their matches, find out more about their family tree and become genealogy addicts like the rest of us!
The Genetic Communities will also help to dispel a lot of the misunderstandings about admixture percentages. I find a lot of people take these percentages far too literally and expect the percentages to correspond to their known genealogy. It is now made much clearer that these percentages do not relate to your recent ancestry. The Genetic Communities provide a much more accurate picture of an individual's recent ancestral origins and will help to allay some of the misconceptions about the "ethnicity" estimates.
Kudos to AncestryDNA for providing us with such an exciting and innovative tool.
What Genetic Communities do you have and what do you think of this new feature?
Update: Following my comments about the presence of a Yorkshire region in a community for the Midlands, the name of this community has now been changed from "English Midlanders" to "English Midlanders and Northerners". I have updated my article accordingly.
It was announced at Rootstech back in February that AncestryDNA are planning to launch a new Genetic Communities feature. See this blog post from the Ancestry Insider for details. I received a St Patrick's Day e-mail from AncestryDNA and it seems that the Communities feature is due to be launched at the end of March. The launch is conveniently timed to coincide with Who Do You Think You Are? Live which takes place in early April. Not all Ancestry customers have received the marketing e-mail and it seems to have been aimed at people in the UK and Ireland. According to the e-mail the "new Genetic Communities feature will map where your family may have lived across 19 different Irish areas, from Derry to Cork. But you're probably not 100% Irish - so we'll also identify the communities that you belong to around Britain and the rest of the world." The e-mail includes a link to this landing page which has a few additional details. .
I've been included in the beta-testing program for the new Communities feature but the version I currently I have on my account is not necessarily the finished product so I will report on this feature after the official launch. At present I'm in one community for Southern England but I suspect that there will be further refinements in due course.
In the meantime you can get a glimpse of some of the Irish Genetic Communities on Mike Mulligan's Ancestry Special, a special edition of the Irish TV programme The Late Late Show. The four guests, Maura Derrane, Eamon Dunphy, Jason Byrne and Michael Healy-Rae, were given their DNA results live on air by Mike Mulligan from AncestryDNA. The programme is available on the RTE Player until Sunday 17th April.
AncestryDNA have now published a Genetic Communities White Paper explaining the science behind the new feature, which is well worth a read. The AncestryDNA team have done a superb job explaining some quite complicated concepts in an easily understandable way.
It is an individual decision whether or not to participate in research but whatever you decide make sure you read through all the forms in their entirety before making your decision.
