A Metric on the Space of Reduced Phylogenetic Networks

—Phylogenetic networks are leaf-labeled, rooted, acyclic, directed graphs, that are used to model reticulate evolutionary histories. Several measures for quantifying the topological dissimilarity between two phylogenetic networks have been devised, each of which was proven to be a metric on certain restricted classes of phylogenetic networks. A biologically-motivated class of phylogenetic networks, namely reduced phylogenetic networks, was recently introduced. None of the existing measures is a metric on the space of reduced phylogenetic networks. In this paper, we provide a metric on the space of reduced phylogenetic networks that is computable in time polynomial in the size of the networks.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TCBB
• Authors: Luay Nakhleh
• Keywords: Certain Restricted Classes, Metric, Phylogenetic Networks, TCBB 2010