Phylogenetic postprocessing

Phylogenetic reconstruction techniques often produce multiple, competing evolutionary hypotheses. The umbrella term phylogenetic postprocessing encompasses methods that attempt to reconcile the ambiguity. Three classes of phylogenetic postprocessing results are presented. A sublinear (1+ε) approximation algorithm is derived for computing the familiar Robinson-Foulds (RF) distance between two trees. Standard consensus methods are augmented to take edge weight into consideration. A new consensus method based on edge weights is introduced. A generalized family of metrics on tree space is derived. The metrics can be equipped with sensitivity to edge weights. Two members of the family are the RF metric and the weighted RF metric. The remainder of this extended abstract focuses solely on the RF approximation algorithm.