scholarly journals Complexity of the simplest species tree problem

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianqi Zhu ◽  
Ziheng Yang
Keyword(s):  
Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Ancestral Population ◽  
Statistical Efficiency ◽  
Multispecies Coalescent ◽  
Full Likelihood ◽  
Tree Methods ◽  
Tree Estimation

Abstract The multispecies coalescent (MSC) model provides a natural framework for species tree estimation accounting for gene-tree conflicts. While a number of species tree methods under the MSC have been suggested and evaluated using simulation, their statistical properties remain poorly understood. Here we use mathematical analysis aided by computer simulation to examine the identifiability, consistency, and efficiency of different species tree methods in the case of three species and three sequences under the molecular clock. We consider four major species-tree methods including concatenation, two-step, independent-sites maximum likelihood (ISML) and maximum likelihood (ML). We develop approximations that predict that the probit transform of the species tree estimation error decreases linearly with the square root of the number of loci. Even in this simplest case major differences exist among the methods. Fulllikelihood methods are considerably more efficient than summary methods such as concatenation and two-step. They also provide estimates of important parameters such as species divergence times and ancestral population sizes while these parameters are not identifiable by summary methods. Our results highlight the need to improve the statistical efficiency of summary methods and the computational efficiency of full likelihood methods of species tree estimation.

scholarly journals PRANC: ML species tree estimation from the ranked gene trees under coalescence

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (18) ◽  
pp. 4819-4821
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Kim ◽  
James H Degnan
Keyword(s):  
Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Supplementary Data ◽  
Gene Trees ◽  
Multispecies Coalescent ◽  
Branch Lengths ◽  
Tree Topologies ◽  
Tree Estimation

Abstract Summary PRANC computes the Probabilities of RANked gene tree topologies under the multispecies coalescent. A ranked gene tree is a gene tree accounting for the temporal ordering of internal nodes. PRANC can also estimate the maximum likelihood (ML) species tree from a sample of ranked or unranked gene tree topologies. It estimates the ML tree with estimated branch lengths in coalescent units. Availability and implementation PRANC is written in C++ and freely available at github.com/anastasiiakim/PRANC. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

scholarly journals Detecting the anomaly zone in species trees and evidence for a misleading signal in higher-level skink phylogeny (Squamata: Scincidae).

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W Linkem ◽  
Vladimir N. Minin ◽  
Adam D Leache
Keyword(s):  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Ancestral Population ◽  
Real Problem ◽  
Species Trees ◽  
Phylogenetic Studies ◽  
New Information ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Tree Methods ◽  
Tree Estimation

The anomaly zone presents a major challenge to the accurate resolution of many parts of the Tree of Life. The anomaly zone is defined by the presence of a gene tree topology that is more probable than the true species tree. This discrepancy can result from consecutive rapid speciation events in the species tree. Similar to the problem of long-branch attraction, including more data (loci) will only reinforce the support for the incorrect species tree. Empirical phylogenetic studies often implement coalescent based species tree methods to avoid the anomaly zone, but to this point these studies have not had a method for providing any direct evidence that the species tree is actually in the anomaly zone. In this study, we use 16 species of lizards in the family Scincidae to investigate whether nodes that are difficult to resolve are located within the anomaly zone. We analyze new phylogenomic data (429 loci), using both concatenation and coalescent based species tree estimation, to locate conflicting topological signal. We then use the unifying principle of the anomaly zone, together with estimates of ancestral population sizes and species persistence times, to determine whether the observed phylogenetic conflict is a result of the anomaly zone. We identify at least three regions of the Scindidae phylogeny that provide demographic signatures consistent with the anomaly zone, and this new information helps reconcile the phylogenetic conflict in previously published studies on these lizards. The anomaly zone presents a real problem in phylogenetics, and our new framework for identifying anomalous relationships will help empiricists leverage their resources appropriately for overcoming this challenge.

scholarly journals The Perfect Storm: Gene Tree Estimation Error, Incomplete Lineage Sorting, and Ancient Gene Flow Explain the Most Recalcitrant Ancient Angiosperm Clade, Malpighiales

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liming Cai ◽  
Zhenxiang Xi ◽  
Emily Moriarty Lemmon ◽  
Alan R Lemmon ◽  
Austin Mast ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Incomplete Lineage Sorting ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Flowering Plant ◽  
Estimation Methods ◽  
Lineage Sorting ◽  
Tree Estimation ◽  
Perfect Storm

Abstract The genomic revolution offers renewed hope of resolving rapid radiations in the Tree of Life. The development of the multispecies coalescent (MSC) model and improved gene tree estimation methods can better accommodate gene tree heterogeneity caused by incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) and gene tree estimation error stemming from the short internal branches. However, the relative influence of these factors in species tree inference is not well understood. Using anchored hybrid enrichment, we generated a data set including 423 single-copy loci from 64 taxa representing 39 families to infer the species tree of the flowering plant order Malpighiales. This order includes nine of the top ten most unstable nodes in angiosperms, which have been hypothesized to arise from the rapid radiation during the Cretaceous. Here, we show that coalescent-based methods do not resolve the backbone of Malpighiales and concatenation methods yield inconsistent estimations, providing evidence that gene tree heterogeneity is high in this clade. Despite high levels of ILS and gene tree estimation error, our simulations demonstrate that these two factors alone are insufficient to explain the lack of resolution in this order. To explore this further, we examined triplet frequencies among empirical gene trees and discovered some of them deviated significantly from those attributed to ILS and estimation error, suggesting gene flow as an additional and previously unappreciated phenomenon promoting gene tree variation in Malpighiales. Finally, we applied a novel method to quantify the relative contribution of these three primary sources of gene tree heterogeneity and demonstrated that ILS, gene tree estimation error, and gene flow contributed to 10.0%, 34.8%, and 21.4% of the variation, respectively. Together, our results suggest that a perfect storm of factors likely influence this lack of resolution, and further indicate that recalcitrant phylogenetic relationships like the backbone of Malpighiales may be better represented as phylogenetic networks. Thus, reducing such groups solely to existing models that adhere strictly to bifurcating trees greatly oversimplifies reality, and obscures our ability to more clearly discern the process of evolution.

scholarly journals To include or not to include: The impact of gene filtering on species tree estimation methods

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin K. Molloy ◽  
Tandy Warnow
Keyword(s):  
Missing Data ◽  
Incomplete Lineage Sorting ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Species Trees ◽  
Lineage Sorting ◽  
Gene Filtering ◽  
Tree Estimation ◽  
The Impact

AbstractSpecies tree estimation from loci sampled from multiple genomes is now common, but is challenged by the heterogeneity across the genome due to multiple processes, such as gene duplication and loss, horizontal gene transfer, and incomplete lineage sorting. Although methods for estimating species trees have been developed that address gene tree heterogeneity due to incomplete lineage sorting, many of these methods operate by combining estimated gene trees and are hence vulnerable to gene tree quality. There is also the added concern that missing data, which is frequently encountered in genome-scale datasets, will impact species tree estimation.Our study addresses the impact of gene filtering on species trees inferred from multi-gene datasets. We address these questions using a large and heterogeneous collection of simulated datasets both with and without missing data. We compare several established coalescent-based methods (ASTRAL, ASTRID, MP-EST, and SVDquartets within PAUP*) as well as unpartitioned concatenation using maximum likelihood (RAxML).Our study shows that gene tree error and missing data impact all methods (and some methods degrade more than others), but the degree of incomplete lineage sorting and gene tree estimation error impacts the absolute and relative performance of methods as well as their response to gene filtering strategies. We find that filtering genes based on the degree of missing data is either neutral or else reduces the accuracy of all five methods examined, and so is not recommended. Filtering genes based on gene tree estimation error shows somewhat different trends. Under low levels of incomplete lineage sorting, removing genes with high gene tree estimation error can improve the accuracy of summary methods, but only if not too many genes are removed. Otherwise, filtering genes tends to increase error, especially under high levels of incomplete lineage sorting. Hence, while filtering genes based on missing data is not recommended, there are conditions under which removing high error gene trees can improve species tree estimation. This study provides insights into prior studies and suggests approaches for analyzing phylogenomic datasets.

scholarly journals Consistency of SVDQuartets and Maximum Likelihood for Coalescent-Based Species Tree Estimation

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wascher ◽  
Laura Kubatko
Keyword(s):  
Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Gene Trees ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Multispecies Coalescent ◽  
Consistency Results ◽  
True Tree ◽  
Tree Inference ◽  
Statistical Consistency

Abstract Numerous methods for inferring species-level phylogenies under the coalescent model have been proposed within the last 20 years, and debates continue about the relative strengths and weaknesses of these methods. One desirable property of a phylogenetic estimator is that of statistical consistency, which means intuitively that as more data are collected, the probability that the estimated tree has the same topology as the true tree goes to 1. To date, consistency results for species tree inference under the multispecies coalescent (MSC) have been derived only for summary statistics methods, such as ASTRAL and MP-EST. These methods have been found to be consistent given true gene trees but may be inconsistent when gene trees are estimated from data for loci of finite length. Here, we consider the question of statistical consistency for four taxa for SVDQuartets for general data types, as well as for the maximum likelihood (ML) method in the case in which the data are a collection of sites generated under the MSC model such that the sites are conditionally independent given the species tree (we call these data coalescent independent sites [CIS] data). We show that SVDQuartets is statistically consistent for all data types (i.e., for both CIS data and for multilocus data), and we derive its rate of convergence. We additionally show that ML is consistent for CIS data under the JC69 model and discuss why a proof for the more general multilocus case is difficult. Finally, we compare the performance of ML and SDVQuartets using simulation for both data types. [Consistency; gene tree; maximum likelihood; multilocus data; hylogenetic inference; species tree; SVDQuartets.]

scholarly journals The Impact of Cross-Species Gene Flow on Species Tree Estimation

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (5) ◽  
pp. 830-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiyun Jiao ◽  
Tomáš Flouri ◽  
Bruce Rannala ◽  
Ziheng Yang
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Sequence Data ◽  
Majority Vote ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Likelihood Method ◽  
Estimation Methods ◽  
Vote Method ◽  
Multispecies Coalescent ◽  
Tree Estimation

Abstract Recent analyses of genomic sequence data suggest cross-species gene flow is common in both plants and animals, posing challenges to species tree estimation. We examine the levels of gene flow needed to mislead species tree estimation with three species and either episodic introgressive hybridization or continuous migration between an outgroup and one ingroup species. Several species tree estimation methods are examined, including the majority-vote method based on the most common gene tree topology (with either the true or reconstructed gene trees used), the UPGMA method based on the average sequence distances (or average coalescent times) between species, and the full-likelihood method based on multilocus sequence data. Our results suggest that the majority-vote method based on gene tree topologies is more robust to gene flow than the UPGMA method based on coalescent times and both are more robust than likelihood assuming a multispecies coalescent (MSC) model with no cross-species gene flow. Comparison of the continuous migration model with the episodic introgression model suggests that a small amount of gene flow per generation can cause drastic changes to the genetic history of the species and mislead species tree methods, especially if the species diverged through radiative speciation events. Estimates of parameters under the MSC with gene flow suggest that African mosquito species in the Anopheles gambiae species complex constitute such an example of extreme impact of gene flow on species phylogeny. [IM; introgression; migration; MSci; multispecies coalescent; species tree.]

scholarly journals The Perfect Storm: Gene Tree Estimation Error, Incomplete Lineage Sorting, and Ancient Gene Flow Explain the Most Recalcitrant Ancient Angiosperm Clade, Malpighiales

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liming Cai ◽  
Zhenxiang Xi ◽  
Emily Moriarty Lemmon ◽  
Alan R. Lemmon ◽  
Austin Mast ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Flow ◽  
Incomplete Lineage Sorting ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Flowering Plant ◽  
Estimation Methods ◽  
Lineage Sorting ◽  
Tree Estimation ◽  
Perfect Storm

ABSTRACTThe genomic revolution offers renewed hope of resolving rapid radiations in the Tree of Life. The development of the multispecies coalescent (MSC) model and improved gene tree estimation methods can better accommodate gene tree heterogeneity caused by incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) and gene tree estimation error stemming from the short internal branches. However, the relative influence of these factors in species tree inference is not well understood. Using anchored hybrid enrichment, we generated a data set including 423 single-copy loci from 64 taxa representing 39 families to infer the species tree of the flowering plant order Malpighiales. This order alone includes nine of the top ten most unstable nodes in angiosperms, and the recalcitrant relationships along the backbone of the order have been hypothesized to arise from the rapid radiation during the Cretaceous. Here, we show that coalescent-based methods do not resolve the backbone of Malpighiales and concatenation methods yield inconsistent estimations, providing evidence that gene tree heterogeneity is high in this clade. Despite high levels of ILS and gene tree estimation error, our simulations demonstrate that these two factors alone are insufficient to explain the lack of resolution in this order. To explore this further, we examined triplet frequencies among empirical gene trees and discovered some of them deviated significantly from those attributed to ILS and estimation error, suggesting gene flow as an additional and previously unappreciated phenomenon promoting gene tree variation in Malpighiales. Finally, we applied a novel method to quantify the relative contribution of these three primary sources of gene tree heterogeneity and demonstrated that ILS, gene tree estimation error, and gene flow contributed to 15%, 52%, and 32% of the variation, respectively. Together, our results suggest that a perfect storm of factors likely influence this lack of resolution, and further indicate that recalcitrant phylogenetic relationships like the backbone of Malpighiales may be better represented as phylogenetic networks. Thus, reducing such groups solely to existing models that adhere strictly to bifurcating trees greatly oversimplifies reality, and obscures our ability to more clearly discern the process of evolution.

scholarly journals QT-GILD: Quartet Based Gene Tree Imputation Using Deep Learning Improves Phylogenomic Analyses Despite Missing Data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sazan Mahbub ◽  
Shashata Sawmya ◽  
Arpita Saha ◽  
Rezwana Reaz ◽  
M. Sohel Rahman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Missing Data ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Dramatic Improvement ◽  
Gene Trees ◽  
Tree Estimation

Species tree estimation is frequently based on phylogenomic approaches that use multiple genes from throughout the genome. However, for a combination of reasons (ranging from sampling biases to more biological causes, as in gene birth and loss), gene trees are often incomplete, meaning that not all species of interest have a common set of genes. Incomplete gene trees can potentially impact the accuracy of phylogenomic inference. We, for the first time, introduce the problem of imputing the quartet distribution induced by a set of incomplete gene trees, which involves adding the missing quartets back to the quartet distribution. We present QT-GILD, an automated and specially tailored unsupervised deep learning technique, accompanied by cues from natural language processing (NLP), which learns the quartet distribution in a given set of incomplete gene trees and generates a complete set of quartets accordingly. QT-GILD is a general-purpose technique needing no explicit modeling of the subject system or reasons for missing data or gene tree heterogeneity. Experimental studies on a collection of simulated and empirical data sets suggest that QT-GILD can effectively impute the quartet distribution, which results in a dramatic improvement in the species tree accuracy. Remarkably, QT-GILD not only imputes the missing quartets but it can also account for gene tree estimation error. Therefore, QT-GILD advances the state-of-the-art in species tree estimation from gene trees in the face of missing data. QT-GILD is freely available in open source form at https://github.com/pythonLoader/QT-GILD .

scholarly journals Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Species Trees from Gene Trees in the Presence of Ancestral Population Structure

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 3977-3995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillary Koch ◽  
Michael DeGiorgio
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Gene Tree ◽  
Species Tree ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
Likelihood Method ◽  
Ancestral Population ◽  
Gene Trees ◽  
Species Trees ◽  
Data Set

Abstract Though large multilocus genomic data sets have led to overall improvements in phylogenetic inference, they have posed the new challenge of addressing conflicting signals across the genome. In particular, ancestral population structure, which has been uncovered in a number of diverse species, can skew gene tree frequencies, thereby hindering the performance of species tree estimators. Here we develop a novel maximum likelihood method, termed TASTI (Taxa with Ancestral structure Species Tree Inference), that can infer phylogenies under such scenarios, and find that it has increasing accuracy with increasing numbers of input gene trees, contrasting with the relatively poor performances of methods not tailored for ancestral structure. Moreover, we propose a supertree approach that allows TASTI to scale computationally with increasing numbers of input taxa. We use genetic simulations to assess TASTI’s performance in the three- and four-taxon settings and demonstrate the application of TASTI on a six-species Afrotropical mosquito data set. Finally, we have implemented TASTI in an open-source software package for ease of use by the scientific community.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document