demes is an R library for parsing and validation of population genetic models in the Demes file format, making such models easy to inspect in R and leverage them for simulation of genomic data using downstream software according to their preferences.
In a sense, the demes package is intended as an R equivalent of the official Python module. Its output is a "low-level" representation of a model encoded in a Demes YAML file that is an entirely unambiguous and portable and can be used by many different simulation frameworks as input. Thus, we can see part of the role of this package as compiling the high-level description of a model into the corresponding "low-level" description at a level of standard R data structures.
A proof-of-concept implementation of Demes for simulation using the slendr R package is in progress.
This package is being developed by @IsabelMarleen as part of her Master's student project in the Racimo group at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen. If you have feature requests or other comments, please open an issue.
You can install the development version of demes from GitHub with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("RacimoLab/demes-r")