Methods for phylogenetic analysis

Abstract: In phylogenetic analysis one study the relationship between different species. By comparing DNA from two different species it is possible to get a numerical value representing the difference between the species. For a set of species, all pair-wise comparisons result in a dissimilarity matrix d. In this thesis I present a few methods for constructing a phylogenetic tree from d. The common denominator for these methods is that they do not generate a tree, but instead give a connected graph. The resulting graph will be a tree, in areas where the data perfectly matches a tree. When d does not perfectly match a tree, the resulting graph will instead show the different possible topologies, and how strong support they have from the data. Finally I have tested the methods both on real measured data and constructed test cases.