Bioinformatics Vol. 16 no. 11 2000
Pages 1010-1013
© 2000 Oxford University Press
Original Paper |
Fels-Rand: an Xlisp-Stat program for the comparative analysis of data under phylogenetic uncertainty
1 Department of Zoology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 2TZ, Scotland, UK
Received on May 12, 2000
; revised on July 24, 2000
; accepted on July 28, 2000
Motivation: Currently available programs for the comparative analysis of phylogenetic data do not perform optimally when the phylogeny is not completely specified (i.e. the phylogeny contains polytomies). Recent literature suggests that a better way to analyse the data would be to create random trees from the known phylogeny that are fully-resolved but consistent with the known tree. A computer program is presented, Fels-Rand, that performs such analyses. A randomisation procedure is used to generate trees that are fully resolved but whose structure is consistent with the original tree. Statistics are then calculated on a large number of these randomly-generated trees. Fels-Rand uses the object-oriented features of Xlisp-Stat to manipulate internal tree representations. Xlisp-Stats dynamic graphing features are used to provide heuristic tools to aid in analysis, particularly outlier analysis. The usefulness of Xlisp-Stat as a system for phylogenetic computation is discussed.
Availability: Available from the author or at http://www.uq.edu.au/~ansblomb/Fels-Rand.sit.hqx. Xlisp-Stat is available from http://stat.umn.edu/~luke/xls/xlsinfo/xlsinfo.html.
Contact: s.blomberg{at}abdn.ac.uk