Ann Carmichael

replying to: A. R. Barton et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08496-5 (2023). We thank Barton et al.1 for their careful consideration of our study2. They raised important concerns, which led them to conclude that our dataset was underpowered to be informative about human evolution during the Black Death. We agree that small sample sizes are an inherent limitation of ancient DNA studies.

Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05349-x Published online 19 October 2022 In the version of the article initially published, the genotype likelihood-based allele frequency estimator we used resulted in a biased estimate of allele frequencies, particularly among sites with low coverage data. We have now corrected this by employing a maximum likelihood-based estimator, which offers an unbiased estimate of allele frequencies.