Beyond Evolutionary Trees

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

2005; Choy, Jansson, Sadakane, Sung

2010; Della Vedova, Dondi, Jiang, Pavesi, Pirola, Wang

2011; Tofigh, Hallett, Lagergren

2011; van Iersel, Kelk

2014; Kelk, Scornavacca

Problem Definition

Recent developments in phylogenetics have provided evidences that evolutionary histories cannot always be represented as a single tree; thus, more sophisticated representations are needed. Phylogenetic networks are natural extensions of phylogenetic trees that recently gathered general consensus in literature. Let Λ be a finite set of labels, representing a set of extant species (taxa). A rooted phylogenetic N over Λ (or, simply, phylogenetic network or network) is a directed acyclic connected graph \(N =\langle V (N),A(N)\rangle\) containing a unique vertex with no incoming arcs, called root of N, and a labeling function from the set L(N) of leaves of N to the set of labels Λ. The set of labels associated with the leaves of N is denoted by Λ(N), and phylogenet ...