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Reconstructing Terrestrial Paleoclimate and Paleoecology with Fossil Leaves Using Digital Leaf Physiognomy and Leaf Mass Per Area
Published on: October 25, 2024
Geometry of the space of phylogenetic trees with non-identical leaves
María A Valdez-Cabrera1, Amy D Willis1
1Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Abstract:
Phylogenetic trees summarize evolutionary relationships. The Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann (BHV) space for comparing phylogenetic trees has many elegant mathematical properties, but it does not encompass trees with differing leaf sets. To overcome this, we introduce Towering space: a complete metric space that extends BHV space to trees with non-identical leaf sets. Towering space is a structured collection of BHV spaces connected via pruning and regrafting operations. We study the geometry of paths in Towering space and present an algorithm for computing metric distances. By addressing a major limitation of BHV space, Towering space facilitates the analysis of modern phylogenetic datasets such as multi-domain gene trees.
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