AncestryDNA's DNA Communities

AncestryDNA provides you with a breakdown of your ethnicity, based on your DNA.  They identify that I am 80% Irish, 13% Great Britain, 2% Iberian Peninsular, with smaller amounts of Italy / Greece and Europe West, but these are very broad categories.

 

Recently, Ancestry added another layer of depth to the ethnicity calculation, by identifying specific genetic communities that you likely belong to.  For me, they only identified one genetic community, which not surprisingly, is Munster Irish.  This was an easy call by Ancestry, as both of my maternal grandparents were born in Tipperary, and their families lived there for generations before. 

 

The feature also allows you to see which of your DNA matches are also in these communities, but just because you both appear in the same genetic community does mean that your common ancestor is from that genetic community.  Out of my 8,750 DNA matches on Ancestry, only 48 are identified as being members of the Munster Irish, so Ancestry is certainly erring on the side of caution. 

 

I was disappointed that they did not identify me as being part of Ulster Irish or Scottish genetic communities, which would help to identify whether my Cosgrave ancestors were long-time Irish or Scottish plantation settlers.  Hopefully over time, as Ancestry refines this new Genetic Communities feature, I will be identified as being part of some other communities.

Jim's Genetic Communities

 

Marlene was a little bit luckier, in that she is identified as being part of three genetic communities, but despite being 52% Irish, she was not identified as being part of any of the Irish genetic communities.  I was not surprised that she was part of the three identified communities, and of her 11,350  DNA matches on Ancestry, 114 are in the French Settlers in Quebec community, 39 are in the Southern English community, and 20 in the Scots in Northeast and Central Scotland community.

 

Marlene's Genetic Communities

 

I was most interested in Marlene's Southern English community, as this is the area where I have had the least success in confirming ancestral matches through DNA.  I was happy to see that Geraldine Hayes was at the top of the list of Marlene's matches in this community, and she was suggested to be a 4th cousin, which is in line with the paper match that Geraldine and I had identified some time back.

 

So I will not be rushing to promote this new feature on AncestryDNA as being a "must have", but it is interesting and may become more useful as a larger proportion of our DNA matches are identified as being part of specific ancestral communities.