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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Majority-Rule Consensus of Phylogenetic Trees Obtained by Maximum-Likelihood Analysis

TLDR
A new method for producing a majority-rule consensus tree that is based on those trees that are not significantly less likely than the ML tree is presented, and this approach is used to analyze the phylogenetic relationship of psbA proteins from four free-living photosynthetic prokaryotes and a chloroplast from green plants.
Abstract
The maximum-likelihood (ML) approach is a powerful tool for reconstructing molecular phylogenies. In conjunction with the Kishino-Hasegawa test, it allows direct comparison of alternative evolutionary hypotheses. A commonly occurring outcome is that several trees are not significantly different from the ML tree, and thus there is residual uncertainty about the correct tree topology. We present a new method for producing a majority-rule consensus tree that is based on those trees that are not significantly less likely than the ML tree. Five types of consensus trees are considered. These differ in the weighting schemes that are employed. Apart from incorporating the topologies of alternative trees, some of the weighting schemes also make use of the differences between the log likelihood estimate of the ML tree and those of the other trees and the standard errors of those differences. The new approach is used to analyze the phylogenetic relationship of psbA proteins from four free-living photosynthetic prokaryotes and a chloroplast from green plants. We conclude that the most promising weighting scheme involves exponential weighting of differences between the log likelihood estimate of the ML tree and those of the other trees standardized by the standard errors of the differences. A consensus tree that is based on this weighting scheme is referred to as a standardized, exponentially weighted consensus tree. The new approach is a valuable alternative to existing treeevaluating methods, because it integrates phylogenetic information from the ML tree with that of trees that do not differ significantly from the ML tree.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Model Selection and Model Averaging in Phylogenetics: Advantages of Akaike Information Criterion and Bayesian Approaches Over Likelihood Ratio Tests

TL;DR: It is argued that the most commonly implemented model selection approach, the hierarchical likelihood ratio test, is not the optimal strategy for model selection in phylogenetics, and that approaches like the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian methods offer important advantages.
Journal ArticleDOI

Investigating Deep Phylogenetic Relationships among Cyanobacteria and Plastids by Small Subunit rRNA Sequence Analysis

TL;DR: Small subunit rRNA sequence data were generated for 27 strains of cyanobacteria and incorporated into a phylogenetic analysis of 1,377 aligned sequence positions, finding all plastids cluster as a strongly supported monophyletic group arising near the root of the cyanobacterial line of descent.
Journal ArticleDOI

How many bootstrap replicates are necessary

TL;DR: This article proposes stopping criteria--that is, thresholds computed at runtime to determine when enough replicates have been generated--and reports on the first large-scale experimental study to assess the effect of the number of replicates on the quality of support values, including the performance of the proposed criteria.
Book ChapterDOI

How Many Bootstrap Replicates Are Necessary

TL;DR: This paper proposes stopping criteria, that is, thresholds computed at runtime to determine when enough replicates have been generated, and reports on the first large-scale experimental study to assess the effect of the number of replicates on the quality of support values, including the performance of the proposed criteria.
Journal ArticleDOI

Correlating viral phenotypes with phylogeny: accounting for phylogenetic uncertainty.

TL;DR: A new Bayesian Markov-Chain Monte Carlo approach to the investigation of phylogeny-trait correlations, which accounts for uncertainty arising from phylogenetic error and provides a statistical significance test of the null hypothesis that traits are associated randomly with phylogeny tips.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using the bootstrap.

TL;DR: The recently‐developed statistical method known as the “bootstrap” can be used to place confidence intervals on phylogenies and shows significant evidence for a group if it is defined by three or more characters.
Journal ArticleDOI

Evolutionary trees from DNA sequences: A maximum likelihood approach

TL;DR: A computationally feasible method for finding such maximum likelihood estimates is developed, and a computer program is available that allows the testing of hypotheses about the constancy of evolutionary rates by likelihood ratio tests.
Book

Statistical Inference

Journal ArticleDOI

Evaluation of the maximum likelihood estimate of the evolutionary tree topologies from DNA sequence data, and the branching order in hominoidea

TL;DR: A new method for estimating the variance of the difference between log likelihood of different tree topologies is developed by expressing it explicitly in order to evaluate the maximum likelihood branching order among Hominoidea.
Journal ArticleDOI

Maximum likelihood phylogenetic estimation from DNA sequences with variable rates over sites: approximate methods

TL;DR: Two approximate methods are proposed for maximum likelihood phylogenetic estimation, which allow variable rates of substitution across nucleotide sites, and one of them uses several categories of rates to approximate the gamma distribution, with equal probability for each category.
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How to construct phylogenetic tree using MEGA 6?

The new approach is a valuable alternative to existing treeevaluating methods, because it integrates phylogenetic information from the ML tree with that of trees that do not differ significantly from the ML tree.