Sackin Indices for Labeled and Unlabeled Classes of Galled Trees

TL;DR

This paper extends the Sackin index to galled trees and their subclasses, analyzing its asymptotic behavior and distribution, revealing convergence to the Airy distribution for uniformly sampled networks.

Contribution

It introduces new Sackin index extensions for galled trees and proves their asymptotic mean and distributional convergence, advancing understanding of tree balance measures.

Findings

Mean of Sackin index asymptotic to μ n^{3/2}

Scaled Sackin index converges to Airy distribution

Results apply to both labeled and unlabeled galled trees

Abstract

The Sackin index is an important measure for the balance of phylogenetic trees. We investigate two extensions of the Sackin index to the class of galled trees and two of its subclasses (simplex galled trees and normal galled trees) where we consider both labeled and unlabeled galled trees. In all cases, we show that the mean of the Sackin index for a network which is uniformly sampled from its class is asymptotic to $\mu n^{3/2}$ for an explicit constant $\mu$. In addition, we show that the scaled Sackin index convergences weakly and with all its moments to the Airy distribution.