Phylogenetic trees using evolutionary search: initial progress in extending Gaphyl to work with genetic data

Gaphyl is an application of evolutionary algorithms (EA’s) to phylogenetics, an approach used by biologists to investigate evolutionary relationships among organisms. For datasets larger than 20-30 species, exhaustive search is not practical in this domain. Gaphyl uses an evolutionary search mechanism to search the space of possible phylogenetic trees, in an attempt to find the most plausible evolutionary hypotheses, while typical phylogenetic software packages use heuristic search methods. In previous work, Gaphyl has been shown to be a promising approach for searching for phylogentic trees using data with binary attributes and Wagner parsimony to evaluate the trees. In the work reported here, Gaphyl is extended to work with genetic data. Initial results with this extension further suggest that evolutionary search is a promising approach for phylogenetic work.