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MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 13, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2007 24(4):1075-1079; doi:10.1093/molbev/msm028
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Research Articles

The Bayesian "Star Paradox" Persists for Long Finite Sequences

Mike Steel1 and Frederick A. Matsen

Biomathematics Research Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

E-mail: m.steel{at}math.canterbury.ac.nz.

Accepted for publication January 31, 2007.

The "star paradox" in phylogenetics is the tendency for a particular resolved tree to be sometimes strongly supported even when the data is generated by an unresolved ("star") tree. There have been contrary claims as to whether this phenomenon persists when very long sequences are considered. This note settles one aspect of this debate by proving mathematically that the chance that a resolved tree could be strongly supported stays above some strictly positive number, even as the length of the sequences becomes very large.

Key Words: phylogenetic trees • Bayesian statistics • star trees

1 Present address: Biomathematics Research Centre, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Herve Philippe, Associate Editor


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