An ultrafast tool for minimum reticulate networks

Due to hybridization events in evolution, studying different genes of a set of species may yield two or more related but different phylogenetic trees for the set of species. In this case, we want to combine the trees into a reticulate network with the fewest hybridization events. In this article, we develop a software tool (named UltraNet) for several fundamental problems related to the construction of minimum reticulate networks from two or more phylogenetic trees. Our experimental results show that UltraNet is much faster than all previous tools for these problems. © 2013 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.