2018/06/13 by Allman, Elizabeth S., Long, Colby, Rhodes, John A.
#FOS: Biological sciences #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1806.04974
The log-det distance between two aligned DNA sequences was introduced as a tool for statistically consistent inference of a gene tree under simple non-mixture models of sequence evolution. Here we prove that the log-det distance, coupled with a distance-based tree construction method, also permits consistent inference of species trees under mixture models appropriate to aligned genomic-scale sequences data. Data may include sites from many genetic loci, which evolved on different gene trees due to incomplete lineage sorting on an ultrametric species tree, with different time-reversible substitution processes. The simplicity and speed of distance-based inference suggests log-det based methods should serve as benchmarks for judging more elaborate and computationally-intensive species trees inference methods.