title: Accelerating Bayesian inference for evolutionary biology models.
abstract: Bayesian inference is widely used nowadays and relies largely on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Evolutionary biology has greatly benefited from the developments of MCMC methods, but the design of more complex and realistic models and the ever growing availability of novel data is pushing the limits of the current use of these methods.
  
  
  
  We present a parallel Metropolis-Hastings (M-H) framework built with a novel combination of enhancements aimed towards parameter-rich and complex models. We show on a parameter-rich macroevolutionary model increases of the sampling speed up to 35 times with 32 processors when compared to a sequential M-H process. More importantly, our framework achieves up to a twentyfold faster convergence to estimate the posterior probability of phylogenetic trees using 32 processors when compared to the well-known software MrBayes for Bayesian inference of phylogenetic trees.
  
  
  
  https://bitbucket.org/XavMeyer/hogan.
  
  
  
  nicolas.salamin@unil.ch.
  
  
  
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.|Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Quartier Sorge, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.|Department of Computer Science, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Quartier Sorge, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.|Department of Computer Science, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Bastien
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chopard
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.|Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Quartier Sorge, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Salamin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005580:Fossils; D008954:Models, Biological; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics; D012984:Software