title: Bootstrap method of interior-branch test for phylogenetic trees.
abstract: Statistical properties of the bootstrap test of interior branch lengths of phylogenetic trees have been studied and compared with those of the standard interior-branch test in computer simulations. Examination of the properties of the tests under the null hypothesis showed that both tests for an interior branch of a predetermined topology are quite reliable when the distribution of the branch length estimate approaches a normal distribution. Unlike the standard interior-branch test, the bootstrap test appears to retain this property even when the substitution rate varies among sites. In this case, the distribution of the branch length estimate deviates from a normal distribution, and the standard interior-branch test gives conservative confidence probability values. A simple correction method was developed for both interior-branch tests to be applied for testing the reliability of tree topologies estimated from sequence data. This correction for the standard interior-branch test appears to be as effective as that obtained in our previous study, though it is much simpler. The bootstrap and standard interior-branch tests for estimated topologies become conservative as the number of sequence groups in a star-like tree increases.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park 16802, USA. tanya@imeg.bio.psu.edu
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sitnikova
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D010802:Phylogeny; D013223:Statistics as Topic