On Nakhleh's latest metric for phylogenetic networks

TL;DR

This paper proves that Nakhleh's recent dissimilarity measure is a true metric with strong separation power for various classes of phylogenetic networks, enhancing tools for their comparison.

Contribution

It establishes that Nakhleh's measure is a metric on key classes of phylogenetic networks and distinguishes networks with different reduced forms, improving network comparison methods.

Findings

Nakhleh's measure is a metric on tree-child networks.

It is a metric on semi-binary time consistent networks.

It distinguishes networks with different reduced versions.

Abstract

We prove that Nakhleh's latest dissimilarity measure for phylogenetic networks is a metric on the classes of tree-child phylogenetic networks, of semi-binary time consistent tree-sibling phylogenetic networks, and of multi-labeled phylogenetic trees. We also prove that it distinguishes phylogenetic networks with different reduced versions. In this way, it becomes the dissimilarity measure for phylogenetic networks with the strongest separation power available so far.