Species notions that combine phylogenetic trees and phenotypic partitions

TL;DR

This paper extends a recent method for defining species by combining phylogenetic trees with phenotypic partitions, exploring its properties and enabling multiple phenotypic partitions to be integrated.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized framework that combines an arbitrary number of phenotypic partitions with phylogenetic trees for species notions.

Findings

Analyzed combinatorial properties of the approach

Extended the method to multiple phenotypic partitions

Provided theoretical insights into species delineation

Abstract

A recent paper (Manceau and Lambert, 2016) developed a novel approach for describing two well-defined notions of 'species' based on a phylogenetic tree and a phenotypic partition. In this paper, we explore some further combinatorial properties of this approach and describe an extension that allows an arbitrary number of phenotypic partitions to be combined with a phylogenetic tree for these two species notions.