2020/04/08 by Alexey Markin, Markin, Alexey, Oliver Eulenstein +2
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Genetic diversity and population structure #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #Probability (math.PR)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2004.04299
openalex publication_date 2020/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The classic multispecies coalescent (MSC) model provides the means for\ntheoretical justification of incomplete lineage sorting-aware species tree\ninference methods. A large body of work in phylogenetics is dedicated to the\ndesign of inference methods that are statistically consistent under MSC. One of\nsuch particularly popular methods is ASTRAL, a quartet-based species tree\ninference method. A few recent studies suggested that ASTRAL also performs well\nwhen given multi-locus gene trees in simulation studies. Further, Legried et\nal. recently demonstrated that ASTRAL is statistically consistent under the\ngene duplication and loss model (GDL). Note that GDL is prevalent in\nevolutionary histories and is a part of the powerful\nduplication-loss-coalescence evolutionary model (DLCoal) by Rasmussen and\nKellis. In this work we prove that ASTRAL is statistically consistent under the\ngeneral DLCoal model. Therefore, our result supports the empirical evidence\nfrom the simulation-based studies. More broadly, we prove that a randomly\nchosen quartet from a gene tree (with unique taxa) is more likely to agree with\nthe respective species tree quartet than any of the two other quartets.\n