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arXiv · 1402.3771

Tracing evolutionary links between species

Mike Steel
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Abstract

The idea that all life on earth traces back to a common beginning dates back at least to Charles Darwin's {\em Origin of Species}. Ever since, biologists have tried to piece together parts of this `tree of life' based on what we can observe today: fossils, and the evolutionary signal that is present in the genomes and phenotypes of different organisms. Mathematics has played a key role in helping transform genetic data into phylogenetic (evolutionary) trees and networks. Here, I will explain some of the central concepts and basic results in phylogenetics, which benefit from several branches of mathematics, including combinatorics, probability and algebra.

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Mike Steel. 2014-02-16. Tracing evolutionary links between species. https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.3771

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