2008/01/18 by Elizabeth S. Allman, Allman, Elizabeth S., John A. Rhodes +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Algorithms and Data Compression #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #FOS: Biological sciences #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0801.2982
12 pages, 2 figures; Final version
openalex publication_date 2008/01/18 · arxiv created 2008/05/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Covarion models of character evolution describe inhomogeneities in substitution processes through time. In phylogenetics, such models are used to describe changing functional constraints or selection regimes during the evolution of biological sequences. In this work the identifiability of such models for generic parameters on a known phylogenetic tree is established, provided the number of covarion classes does not exceed the size of the observable state space. `Generic parameters' as used here means all parameters except possibly those in a set of measure zero within the parameter space. Combined with earlier results, this implies both the tree and generic numerical parameters are identifiable if the number of classes is strictly smaller than the number of observable states.