Gromov meets Phylogenetics - new Animals for the Zoo of Biocomputable Metrics on Tree Space

Abstract

We present a new class of metrics for unrooted phylogenetic $X$-trees derived from the Gromov-Hausdorff distance for (compact) metric spaces. These metrics can be efficiently computed by linear or quadratic programming. They are robust under NNI-operations, too. The local behavior of the metrics shows that they are different from any formerly introduced metrics. The performance of the metrics is briefly analised on random weighted and unweighted trees as well as random caterpillars.