The standard lateral gene transfer model is statistically consistent for pectinate four-taxon trees

TL;DR

This paper proves that the standard model for lateral gene transfer is statistically consistent for all four-taxon tree topologies except for one specific case, supporting the reliability of majority-vote methods in species tree inference.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that the standard lateral gene transfer model is statistically consistent across all four-taxon topologies except for a known problematic case.

Findings

The model is consistent for all but one four-taxon topology.

Majority-vote methods are reliable under the standard model.

Identifies the specific topology where inconsistency occurs.

Abstract

Evolutionary events such as incomplete lineage sorting and lateral gene transfer constitute major problems for inferring species trees from gene trees, as they can sometimes lead to gene trees which conflict with the underlying species tree. One particularly simple and efficient way to infer species trees from gene trees under such conditions is to combine three-taxon analyses for several genes using a majority vote approach. For incomplete lineage sorting this method is known to be statistically consistent, however, in the case of lateral gene transfer it is known that a zone of inconsistency does exist for a specific four-taxon tree topology. In this paper we analyze all remaining four-taxon topologies and show that no other inconsistencies exist.