An extension of the classic Buneman theorem from phylogenetic trees to networks

Abstract

Phylogenetic networks provide a natural framework for representing reticulate evolutionary events such as horizontal gene transfer and hybridization. In the present manuscript, we investigate the identifiability of phylogenetic networks under (hardwired) parsimony, a natural extension of Maximum Parsimony from trees to networks. More precisely, we ask which structural features of a network can be uniquely inferred from so-called $A_k$-alignments under this criterion. While identifiability has been studied extensively for phylogenetic trees under parsimony, little is known about the identifiability of networks under hardwired parsimony. We take a first step towards addressing this gap by developing a general framework for studying identifiability under hardwired parsimony. We then use this framework to show that the tree of blobs of a phylogenetic network can be reconstructed from its $A_1$-alignment. This result can be viewed as a natural extension of Buneman's well-known splits equivalence theorem. Finally, we show that, under hardwired parsimony, cycles of length at least $5$ cannot in general be uniquely identified from character data, establishing a fundamental limitation of hardwired parsimony.