New feature on Ancestry.com - Genetic Communities - Thoughts?

Question

Just wondering what folks thought about Ancestry's new feature -Genetic Communities. It's still in beta mode, but it is accessable from individual ancestry accounts.  There's also an article here: http://thednageek.com/genetic-communities-are-here/

 

 

Comments

For anyone interested in learning more about Genetic Communities (GCs), Blaine Bettinger hosted a webinar this afternoon at familytreewebinars. The live webinar is over, but the recording will be available for free for a week on their site. After a week, you'll need to have a subscription to familytreewebinars to view it.

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The link for that webinar is here: http://familytreewebinars.com/download.php?webinar_id=618

 

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I have just been looking at it this week, I have my mother, wife and I on Ancestry with AncestryDNA tests.  The communties is something I am still checking out, but the groups for myself and mother have not given up anything new and eye popping ... but my wifes has opened up some new leads and has pointed me to look at things different for her line.

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Ancestry has given me only one genetic community, and that is Norwegian together with upper midwest area (mostly). But I am a mixed European-derived mutt. So I look forward to future additions (wishful thinking?).

Answer 1

I was disappointed because Genetic Communities only told me about communities I have already extensively researched.  I was hoping to see more about origin information (this is what people were saying we would see come from this new feature).  And who knows, maybe they will add that eventually.

Right now, the only benefit I see for a seasoned researcher/DNA user is the Connections tab where you can see all of your DNA matches from the same community. This helps put people with no trees or locked trees into a group.

Answer 2

I just looked through that for all my kits, who have very different ancestries... for me, these communities were freakishly accurate. I guess it's no surprise, given the abundency of data that they have to work with but wow.

All the groups aren't completed yet but it nailed the different colonial American ancestries for the 3 kits that have and it picked up the eastern european ancestry of another kit, even the region there.

Very nice!

Answer 3

I just took an initial look at the Genetic Communities and think it's a good tool and will be even better once they get the map feature working better.  I have three kits (my two brothers and I) and we all show a little different. I also see that even though we are 99.9% European in ancestral origin, all of the Communities fall in the Americas.  Correct me if I am wrong, but this tells me that for at least the last few hundred years or so, my family has been in the Americas, and predominately mixed with other families who have been here for a few hundred years as well.

Answer 4

Interesting, but not unexpected. All my father's ancestors are New England. Unfortunately there is not enough data to show anything about my mother from Eastern Europe.

Answer 5

Genetic Communities is a nice graphical representation of my ancestors' migration patterns.  I can't say it has yielded any surprises.  It has been very accurate though going by what I know through my tree and paper trail, showing the migration from Maryland, Virginia into Kentucky.  It hasn't  shown the migration from Kentucky to Texas yet on my maternal side which occurred in the past 100+ years. I would like to see a more detailed area in England where my ancestors came from. Perhaps that will come later as the Communities develop more.

Answer 6

Both of the genetic communities, I was included in, settlers of colonial new England and Eastern Norwegians were both dead on as far as where my ancestors lived.

 

look promising.

Answer 7

This is a great new feature. Two of the tests that I administer have a great-grandfather who married an Irish immigrant in Pittsburgh in 1869. I can't find anything on this great-grandfather earlier than 1869. Both of these testers (first cousins) are in the Scots Genetic Community. The great-grandfather's surname is Lennox, so this could very well be a clue on my Lennox grandparent - which would be a huge find for me.

Answer 8

The ones I got seem accurate: Western Norwegians (likely), Connacht Irish (possible), and Ulster Irish (possible). My mother's father was half Norwegian, and my father's mother was 1/4 Norwegian. I have identified an immigrant ancestor from Connacht and an immigrant ancestor from Ulster. However, I looked at all the available communities, and I don't understand why I didn't also get Swedes, since my father's mother was 3/4 Swedish. I didn't get Germans, Netherlanders, Belgians & Luxembourgians either, and my maternal grandmother was the daughter of German immigrants.

Answer 9

Here is another write-up on Genetic Communities.

http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2017/03/28/ancestrydnas-genetic-communities-are-finally-here/

Answer 10

No surprises for my mother and me, England and Ireland!  What I did like was the migration maps and surrounding history for the different communities.  Whilst I had 3 and Mum had 2 communities, there are many others, and clearly our matches didn't have.  It is good the way you can sort your match list by community.  Of the 1000's of matches I have only about 10% of our matches were actually connected to our communities.  I assume that means we didn't have a community in common.  Yet.

Answer 11

I don't get the point of it.

Comments

More Bells and Whistles to make more people want to test their DNA at Ancestry.  DNA testing is becoming a competitive market.

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It tells you where to look to maybe find leads on your genealogy. If you already have done an exemplary job at documenting the migration of your ancestors for like 10 generations then it probably won't yield anything new.

Answer 12

If you read their white papers after they run their algorithm and define "communities" based on DNA matches, then they use the information in our trees (and their records) to determine the geographic aspects. It may more helpful to new researchers with small trees or people looking for bio family.

Answer 13

Ancestry has too many wanna-be genealogists that just click the buttons to get the answers they want.

So how accurate can this be if they are looking at the trees and / or circles.

 

The last time they updated the algorithms, I lost half of my Circles. Finally I have almost gained them all back... 51 circles so far

Answer 14

Interesting pictorial representation of clusters of matches.

Initially I thought that it would be great for figuring out more about those who do not have trees, or whose trees are private as they too are clustered.

However my enthusiasm dimmed when I examined my Southern England cluster (which I, but not my maternal cousin, has, which is a bit odd given he and I share that ancestry and the matches therefrom!)

Included in that cluster were two of my Paternal side matches, both of whom have been fully triangulated using GedMatch and belong  firmly to my Scottish ancestry, one from the Scottish Borders, the other from my Stirlingshire/Perthshire  ancestry which is rather unlikely to have come from Southern England.

One of these triangulated matches has two English places mentioned in their tree "England" and "Northumberland, England".

Which seems that their place search once they're beyond the DNA matching part of their algorithm and looking at the trees, is as good as when you search for matches with Somerset, England, eg, you also get all those that are just "England".

 

Another link I don't think anyone has mentioned:

https://cruwys.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/ancestrydnas-new-genetic-communities.html

 

Lorna

http://LornaHen.com