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Updated: Oct 10, 2025

A Method for Quantifying Foliage-Dwelling Arthropods
Published on: October 20, 2019
The geometric mean length, a new statistic to describe the distribution of character steps on a tree
Philippe Grandcolas, Tony Robillard1, Cyrille D'Haese1
1FRE 2695 CNRS, Département Systématique et Evolution, case 50, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 45, rue Buffon, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Abstract:
The geometric mean length (GML) is proposed as a new statistic aimed at describing the evenness of character changes on a tree for a given set of character optimizations. It is the geometric mean of the number of steps on each branch of the tree, varying between a maximum value when all branch lengths are equal, and a minimum value when all branches but one have only one character step. It can be scaled according to its theoretical maximum value, thus indicating a relative GML that allows a comparison of the evenness of character steps between different tree topologies.
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