Rooted NNI moves and distance-1 tail moves on tree-based phylogenetic networks (Q2656967)

This article proves that the spaces of rooted network networks are connected with respect to the movements of the nearest neighbor (rooted nearest neighbor interchange, rNNI). This is the root analogue of the result showing the connectivity of non-root tree-like network spaces as NNI moves. The non-root result does not naturally extend to the root case, because directionality on the edges in the root case imposes significant additional restrictions on both rNNI displacements and the networks themselves. A similar result has been proven for root phylogenetic networks that allow parallel edges, but the paper shows that the spaces are connected by the introduced tail motions by a distance-1. In addition, the upper boundaries of the diameter of the space of phylogenetic networks based on trees were determined for these two displacements. Previously, similar results were obtained, but the additional limitation of staying within the level of tree networks is a key challenge of this study.