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The Probabilities of Trees and Cladograms under Ford's α-Model
Tomás M Coronado1, Arnau Mir1, Francesc Rosselló1
1Balearic Islands Health Research Institute (IdISBa) and Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of the Balearic Islands, 07122 Palma, Spain.
Abstract:
Ford's α-model is one of the most popular random parametric models of bifurcating phylogenetic tree growth, having as specific instances both the uniform and the Yule models. Its general properties have been used to study the behavior of phylogenetic tree shape indices under the probability distribution it defines. But the explicit formulas provided by Ford for the probabilities of unlabeled trees and phylogenetic trees fail in some cases. In this paper we give correct explicit formulas for these probabilities.
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