Phylogenetic super-networks from partial trees

In practice, one is often faced with incomplete phylogenetic data, such as a collection of partial trees or partial splits. This paper poses the problem of inferring a phylogenetic super-network from such data and provides an efficient algorithm for doing so, called the Z-closure method. Additionally, the questions of assigning lengths to the edges of the network and how to restrict the "dimensionality" of the network are addressed. Applications to a set of five published partial gene trees relating different fungal species and to six published partial gene trees relating different grasses illustrate the usefulness of the method and an experimental study confirms its potential. The method is implemented as a plug-in for the program SplitsTree4.