The compressions of reticulation-visible networks are tree-child

Abstract

Rooted phylogenetic networks are rooted acyclic digraphs. They are used to model complex evolution where hybridization, recombination and other reticulation events play important roles. A rigorous definition of network compression is introduced on the basis of the recent studies of the relationships between cluster, tree and rooted phylogenetic network. The concept reveals another interesting connection between the two well-studied network classes|tree-child networks and reticulation-visible networks|and enables us to define a new class of networks for which the cluster containment problem has a linear-time algorithm.