Consistency of the Neighbor-Net algorithm

David Bryant, Vincent Moulton, Andreas Spillner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background
Neighbor-Net is a novel method for phylogenetic analysis that is currently being widely used in areas such as virology, bacteriology, and plant evolution. Given an input distance matrix, Neighbor-Net produces a phylogenetic network, a generalization of an evolutionary or phylogenetic tree which allows the graphical representation of conflicting phylogenetic signals.

Results
In general, any network construction method should not depict more conflict than is found in the data, and, when the data is fitted well by a tree, the method should return a network that is close to this tree. In this paper we provide a formal proof that Neighbor-Net satisfies both of these requirements so that, in particular, Neighbor-Net is statistically consistent on circular distances.
Original languageEnglish
JournalAlgorithms for Molecular Biology
Volume2
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jun 2007

Cite this