Phylogeny and Reconstructing Phylogenetic Trees

Summary

All the parts together

Here you have the actual phylogenetic tree, a distance matrix based on a set of mutations, and the reconstructed tree. When the two trees are isomorphic, then they will be painted all black. Differences are painted in red. Of course, some differences don't count. For instance, whether a descendant species is drawn to the left or the right is irrelevant. Distances are ignored, too.

A node (dot) in the actual tree corresponds to a node in the reconstructed tree if they have exactly the same set of extant species as descendants. Those are the nodes that are drawn in black. All others are drawn in red.

to reconstruction methods. to the cover page. to the applet.

David E. Joyce

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Clark University

January, 1996