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Phylogenetic networks extend phylogenetic trees to allow for modeling reticulate evolutionary processes such as hybridization. They take the shape of a rooted, directed, acyclic graph, and when parameterized with evolutionary parameters, such as divergence times and population sizes, they form a generative process of molecular sequence evolution. Early work on computational methods for phylogenetic network inference focused exclusively on reticulations and sought networks with the fewest number of reticulations to fit the data. As processes such as incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) could be at play concurrently with hybridization, work in the last decade has shifted to computational approaches for phylogenetic network inference in the presence of ILS. In such a short period, significant advances have been made on developing and implementing such computational approaches. In particular, parsimony, likelihood, and Bayesian methods have been devised for estimating phylogenetic networks and associated parameters using estimated gene trees as data. Use of those inference methods has been augmented with statistical tests for specific hypotheses of hybridization, like the D-statistic. Most recently, Bayesian approaches for inferring phylogenetic networks directly from sequence data were developed and implemented. In this chapter, we survey such advances and discuss model assumptions as well as methods’ strengths and limitations. We also discuss parallel efforts in the population genetics community aimed at inferring similar structures. Finally, we highlight major directions for future research in this area.
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Computing the Bounds of the Number of Reticulations in a Tree-Child Network That Displays a Set of Trees
Phylogenetic network is an evolutionary model that uses a rooted directed acyclic graph (instead of a tree) to model an evolutionary history of species in which reticulate events (e.g., hybrid speciation or horizontal gene transfer) occurred. Tree-child network is a kind of phylogenetic network with structural constraints. Existing approaches for tree-child network reconstruction can be slow for large data. In this study, we present several computational approaches for bounding from below the number of reticulations in a tree-child network that displays a given set of rooted binary phylogenetic trees. In addition, we also present some theoretical results on bounding from above the number of reticulations. Through simulation, we demonstrate that the new lower bounds on the reticulation number for tree-child networks can practically be computed for large tree data. The bounds can provide estimates of reticulation for relatively large data.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1909425
- PAR ID:
- 10540524
- Publisher / Repository:
- Mary Ann Liebert
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Computational Biology
- Volume:
- 31
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1557-8666
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 345 to 359
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1089/cmb.2023.0309
