Estimating divergence times (Q1109710)

A statistical method of estimating population splitting times is developed. We consider three populations, with an assumed known tree topology for their phylogenetic tree. From simulation studies, we find that the method of moments performs very well, in particular for both large number of loci and divergence times, in estimating genetic divergence times. The bias decreases as the number of loci increases. The maximum likelihood method proves to be a good method for constructing an unknown phylogenetic tree, in particular for large divergence times.