When a beneficial mutation occurs in a population, the new, favored allele may spread to the entire population. This process is known as a selective sweep. Suppose we sample n individuals from the population at the end of a selective sweep. If we focus on a site on the chromosome that is close to the location of the beneficial mutation, then many of the lineages will likely be descended from the individual that had the beneficial mutation, while others will be descended from a different individual because of recombination between the two sites. We will describe a random partition of {1, ..., n} which gives a very accurate approximation to the effect of the selective sweep on the genealogy of the n sampled individuals.
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