Pruned median networks: A technique for reducing the complexity of median networks

Observations from molecular marker studies on recently diverged species ind icate that substitution patterns in DNA sequences can often be complex and poorly described by tree-like bifurcating evolutionary models. These observ ations might result from processes of-species diversification and/or proces ses of sequence evolution that are not tree-like. In these Cases, bifurcati ng tree representations provide poor visualization of phylogenetic signals in sequence data. In this paper, we use median networks to study DNA sequen ce substitution patterns in plant nuclear and chloroplast markers. We descr ibe how to prune median networks to obtain so called pruned median networks . These simpler networks may help to provide a useful framework for investi gating the phylogenetic complexity of recently diverged taxa with hybrid or igins.: (C) 2001 Academic Press.