The tree of life and other affine buildings (Q1126852)

The task of phylogenetic analysis as defined by E. Haeckel is to unravel that scheme by comparing systematically all data available regarding present and extinct species. The basic idea in that field is that species (or molecules) which appear to be closely related should have diverged more recently than species which appear to be less closely related. A standard formalization is to measure relatedness by a metric defined on the set of species (or molecules) in question and to construct an \(\mathbb{R}\)-tree which represents the metric (and hence the bifurcation scheme) as closely as possible. The authors discuss necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such a tree that represents the metric exactly, as well as some constructions which lead to that tree if some conditions are fulfilled, and to more or also less treelike structures if not. Remarkably, the theory developed in this context allows the authors also to view affine buildings (which in the rank 1 case are \(\mathbb{R}\)-trees) from a new perspective.