Representing partitions on trees

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Publication:2935263




Abstract: In evolutionary biology, biologists often face the problem of constructing a phylogenetic tree on a set X of species from a multiset Pi of partitions corresponding to various attributes of these species. One approach that is used to solve this problem is to try instead to associate a tree (or even a network) to the multiset SigmaPi consisting of all those bipartitions A,XA with A a part of some partition in Pi. The rational behind this approach is that a phylogenetic tree with leaf set X can be uniquely represented by the set of bipartitions of X induced by its edges. Motivated by these considerations, given a multiset Sigma of bipartitions corresponding to a phylogenetic tree on X, in this paper we introduce and study the set P(Sigma) consisting of those multisets of partitions Pi of X with SigmaPi=Sigma. More specifically, we characterize when P(Sigma) is non-empty, and also identify some partitions in P(Sigma) that are of maximum and minimum size. We also show that it is NP-complete to decide when P(Sigma) is non-empty in case Sigma is an arbitrary multiset of bipartitions of X. Ultimately, we hope that by gaining a better understanding of the mapping that takes an arbitrary partition system Pi to the multiset SigmaPi, we will obtain new insights into the use of median networks and, more generally, split-networks to visualize sets of partitions.









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