Abstract:
Critical branching processes in a varying environment behave much the same as critical Galton–Watson processes. In this note we like to confirm this finding with regard to the underlying genealogical structures. In particular, we consider the most recent common ancestor given survival and the corresponding reduced branching processes, in the spirit of Zubkov (1975) and Fleischmann and Siegmund-Schultze (1977).
Keywords:branching process, varying environment, Galton–Watson process, critical process, reduced process, most recent common ancestor, exponential distribution, Yule process.