INVARIANTS OF SOME PROBABILITY-MODELS USED IN PHYLOGENETIC INFERENCE

Abstract

The so-called method of invariants is a technique in the field of molecular evolution for inferring phylogenetic relations among a number of species on the basis of nucleotide sequence data. An invariant is a polynomial function of the probability distribution defined by a stochastic model for the observed nucleotide sequence. This function has the special property that it is identically zero for one possible phylogeny and typically nonzero for another possible phylogeny. Thus it is possible to discriminate statistically between two competing phylogenies using an estimate of the invariant. The advantage of this technique is that it enables such inferences to be made without the need for esti..