Tutorial on Phylogenetic Inference – 1

Abstract

Phylogenetic Inference is a statistical technique to trace the evolutionary legacy of a wide range of subjects including biological taxa (species), biomolecules, languages, ancient texts and so on. In Part 1 of the tutorial, we begin with an introduction to this field and discuss phenetics and cladistics — two major techniques used for phylogenetic inference. A number of fundamental concepts for understanding phylogenetic inference are introduced. In Part 2, we will learn models of molecular evolution and methods of phylogenetic inference, concluding with a worked-out example.