Abstract
We present an identity-by-descent mapping approach to test the association between genome-wide loci and complex traits. Our method evaluates whether levels of genetic similarities at specific genomic locations, captured by local relatedness matrices derived from multi-individual IBD sharing, are associated with phenotypic variation in complex traits. In addition, we propose an approach to adjust for multiple testing in genome-wide IBD mapping scans based on the correlation structure between test statistics across the genome. Through simulation studies, we demonstrate that our test has a well-controlled genome-wide type I error rate and superior power to detect rare and untyped variants compared to standard single-variant tests. We applied our method to systolic blood pressure data from White British individuals in the UK Biobank.