Dynamic Ising Model: Reconstruction of Evolutionary Trees

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamic Ising model approach for reconstructing evolutionary trees from pairwise distance data, applicable across biological, linguistic, or other evolving entities, providing a mechanical method for inferring ancestral bifurcations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel dynamic Ising model framework for reconstructing evolutionary trees from pairwise distances, offering a mechanical and potentially generalizable method.

Findings

Provides a new mechanical method for tree reconstruction

Applicable to biological and linguistic evolution

Discusses the method's applicability and limitations

Abstract

An evolutionary tree is a cascade of bifurcations starting from a single common root, generating a growing set of daughter species as time goes by. Species here is a general denomination for biological species, spoken languages or any other entity evolving through heredity. From the N currently alive species within a clade, distances are measured through pairwise comparisons made by geneticists, linguists, etc. The larger is such a distance for a pair of species, the older is their last common ancestor. The aim is to reconstruct the past unknown bifurcations, i.e. the whole clade, from the knowledge of the N(N-1)/2 quoted distances taken for granted. A mechanical method is presented, and its applicability discussed.