Open Access
December 2022 The distributions under two species-tree models of the number of root ancestral configurations for matching gene trees and species trees
Filippo Disanto, Michael Fuchs, Ariel R. Paningbatan, Noah A. Rosenberg
Author Affiliations +
Ann. Appl. Probab. 32(6): 4426-4458 (December 2022). DOI: 10.1214/22-AAP1791

Abstract

For a pair consisting of a gene tree and a species tree, the ancestral configurations at a species-tree internal node are the distinct sets of gene lineages that can be present at that node. The enumeration of root ancestral configurations—ancestral configurations at the species-tree root—assists in describing the complexity of gene-tree probability calculations in evolutionary biology. Assuming that the gene tree and species tree match in topology, we study the distribution of the number of root ancestral configurations of a random labeled tree topology under the uniform and Yule–Harding models. We employ analytic combinatorics, considering ancestral configurations in the context of additive tree parameters and using singularity analysis to evaluate asymptotic growth of the coefficients of generating functions. For both models, we obtain asymptotic lognormal distributions for the number of root ancestral configurations. For Yule–Harding random trees, we also obtain the asymptotic mean (1.425n) and variance (2.045n) of the number of root ancestral configurations, paralleling previous results for the uniform model (mean (4/3)n, variance 1.822n). A methodological innovation is that to obtain the Yule–Harding asymptotic variance, singularity analysis is conducted from the Riccati differential equation that the generating function satisfies—without possessing the generating function itself.

Funding Statement

Support was provided by a Rita Levi-Montalcini grant from the Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (FD), grants MOST-104-2923-M-009-006-MY3 and MOST-107-2115-M-009-010-MY2 (MF, ARP) and National Institutes of Health grant R01 GM131404 (NAR).

Acknowledgments

This work developed from discussions at the Banff International Research Station.

Citation

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Filippo Disanto. Michael Fuchs. Ariel R. Paningbatan. Noah A. Rosenberg. "The distributions under two species-tree models of the number of root ancestral configurations for matching gene trees and species trees." Ann. Appl. Probab. 32 (6) 4426 - 4458, December 2022. https://doi.org/10.1214/22-AAP1791

Information

Received: 1 December 2020; Revised: 1 September 2021; Published: December 2022
First available in Project Euclid: 6 December 2022

MathSciNet: MR4522356
zbMATH: 1505.92137
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1214/22-AAP1791

Subjects:
Primary: 60C05 , 92D15
Secondary: 05A15 , 05A16 , 05C05 , 92B10

Keywords: analytic combinatorics , gene trees , Lognormal distribution , Phylogenetics , Riccati equation , species trees

Rights: Copyright © 2022 Institute of Mathematical Statistics

Vol.32 • No. 6 • December 2022
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