A review of metrics measuring dissimilarity for rooted phylogenetic networks

Abstract

A rooted phylogenetic network is an important structure in the description of evolutionary relationships. Computing the distance (topological dissimilarity) between two rooted phylogenetic networks is a fundamental in phylogenic analysis. During the past few decades, several polynomial-time computable metrics have been described. Here, we give a comprehensive review and analysis on those metrics, including the correlation among metrics and the distribution of distance values computed by each metric. Moreover, we describe the software and website, CDRPN (Computing Distance for Rooted Phylogenetic Networks), for measuring the topological dissimilarity between rooted phylogenetic networks.