Abstract
A metric phylogenetic tree relating a collection of taxa induces weighted rooted triples and weighted quartets for all subsets of three and four taxa, respectively. New intertaxon distances are defined that can be calculated from these weights, and shown to exactly fit the same tree topology, but with edge weights rescaled by certain factors dependent on the associated split size. These distances are analogs for metric trees of similar ones recently introduced for topological trees that are based on induced unweighted rooted triples and quartets. The distances introduced here lead to new statistically consistent methods of inferring a metric species tree from a collection of topological gene trees generated under the multispecies coalescent model of incomplete lineage sorting. Simulations provide insight into their potential.
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Notes
R scripts for the analysis are available at: https://jarhodesuaf.github.io/software.html.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Grant R01 GM117590, awarded under the Joint DMS/NIGMS Initiative to Support Research at the Interface of the Biological and Mathematical Sciences.
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Yourdkhani, S., Rhodes, J.A. Inferring Metric Trees from Weighted Quartets via an Intertaxon Distance. Bull Math Biol 82, 97 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-020-00773-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-020-00773-4