STATISTICAL TESTS OF DNA PHYLOGENIES

In this article, we review (1) statistical tests of DNA phylogenies in ferred by the maximum-parsimony method, including tests that take into account the effect of different base compositions among lineages, (2) statistical tests based on the minimum-evolution criterion, i.e., the best tree is the tree with the smallest sum of branch-length estimate s, and (3) the bootstrap technique for estimating the confidence level , of a phylogenetic hypothesis based on either the maximum-parsimony o r the neighbor-joining method. We explain why the bootstrap technique usually gives biased estimates and how to correct the bias.