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Why Phylogenetic Trees are Often Quite Robust Against Lateral Transfers

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Evolutionary Biology

Abstract

The circular order of a tree is the order at which the leaves are encountered in a clockwise scanning of a tree. The circular order of a tree is quite robust against lateral transfers. We show that if lateral transfers are only between consecutive nodes, the tree reconstructed with the Neighbor-Joining algorithm furnishes a perfect order of the nodes. The order of the node corresponds to one of the possible orders of the tree prior to lateral transfer. This result permits to understand why phylogenies obtained from molecular data often furnish reasonable trees despite lateral transfers. Using the mathematical framework introduced in the first part of this chapter, new methods to localize lateral transfers are presented. These methods use minimum contradiction matrices to identify lateral transfers. Several examples on real data show the potential of minimum contradiction matrices in phylogenetic studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. La Colline, Creuze 9, CH-2072, St-Blaise, Switzerland

    Marc Thuillard

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  1. Marc Thuillard
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Correspondence to Marc Thuillard .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS UMR 6632, Université d'Aix-Marseille, place Victor Hugo 3, Marseille CX 03, 13331, France

    Pierre Pontarotti

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Thuillard, M. (2009). Why Phylogenetic Trees are Often Quite Robust Against Lateral Transfers. In: Pontarotti, P. (eds) Evolutionary Biology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00952-5_16

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