On the information content of discrete phylogenetic characters

DOI10.1007/S00285-017-1198-2zbMATH Open1406.05107arXiv1703.04734OpenAlexW2611923408WikidataQ46238089 ScholiaQ46238089MaRDI QIDQ667690FDOQ667690

Authors: Magnus Bordewich, Ina Maria Deutschmann, Mareike Fischer, Elisa Kasbohm, Charles Semple, Mike Steel 

Publication date: 1 March 2019

Published in: Journal of Mathematical Biology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Phylogenetic inference aims to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of different species based on genetic (or other) data. Discrete characters are a particular type of data, which contain information on how the species should be grouped together. However, it has long been known that some characters contain more information than others. For instance, a character that assigns the same state to each species groups all of them together and so provides no insight into the relationships of the species considered. At the other extreme, a character that assigns a different state to each species also conveys no phylogenetic signal. In this manuscript, we study a natural combinatorial measure of the information content of an individual character and analyse properties of characters that provide the maximum phylogenetic information, particularly, the number of states such a character uses and how the different states have to be distributed among the species or taxa of the phylogenetic tree.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04734

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zbMATH Keywords

phylogenyconvexityinformation contentcharacter

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of graph theory (05C90) Problems related to evolution (92D15) Trees (05C05) Systems biology, networks (92C42) Enumeration in graph theory (05C30)

Cites Work

• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Counting phylogenetic networks
• Four Characters Suffice to Convexly Define a Phylogenetic Tree
• On the Distribution of Lengths of Evolutionary Trees
• Identifying \(X\)-trees with few characters

Cited In (3)

• The impact and interplay of long and short branches on phylogenetic information content
• Information geometry for phylogenetic trees
• An extended model for phylogenetic maximum likelihood based on discrete morphological characters

Uses Software

• OEIS

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