Testing the Effects of Speciation and Mutation Rates on Distance-Based Phylogenetic Tree Construction Accuracy Using EcoSim

Biologists regularly construct phylogenetic trees during their research in order to understand the evolutionary history of their subjects. Typically the actual phylogenetic tree is not known, and thus the phylogenetic tree produced is only an estimate. There are two main categories of phylogenetic tree construction, distance-based methods and character-based methods. In all cases, the effects of mutation rate and genetic compactness of species clusters on phylogenetic tree construction accuracy are not well understood. In order to test the correctness of a particular method, it is imperative to perform the study in a system for which the actual phylogenetic tree is known. Thus, realistic and complex simulations in which evolution and speciation occur provide a perfect platform for such a study. EcoSim is such a simulation, and is a simulatio