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On the Distribution of the Distances Between Pairs of Leaves in Phylogenetic Trees

Authors:
Arnau Mir
Francesc Rosselló

Keywords: phylogenetic trees; statistical distribution

Abstract:
The distance, or path length, between two nodes in a phylogenetic tree (rooted or unrooted) is defined as the length of the unique undirected path connecting these nodes. In this paper we study the distribution of the distances between pairs of leaves in fully resolved phylogenetic trees with a fixed number of leaves. More precisely, we prove both in the unrooted and the rooted cases that, when the trees are equiprobably chosen, this distribution approximates a gamma distribution.

Pages: 100 to 103

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: May 22, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4383

ISBN: 978-1-61208-137-3

Location: Venice/Mestre, Italy

Dates: from May 22, 2011 to May 27, 2011