The purpose of this article is to show how the isotropy subgroup of leaf permutations on binary trees can be used to systematically identify tree-informative invariants relevant to models of phylogenetic evolution. In the quartet case, we give an explicit construction of the full set of representations and describe their properties. We apply these results directly to Markov invariants, thereby extending previous theoretical results by systematically identifying linear combinations that vanish for a given quartet. We also note that the theory is fully generalizable to arbitrary trees and is equally applicable to the related case of phylogenetic invariants. All results follow from elementary consideration of the representation theory of finite groups.
History
Publication title
Journal of Theoretical Biology
Volume
258
Pagination
302-310
ISSN
0022-5193
Department/School
School of Natural Sciences
Publisher
Academic Press Ltd-Elsevier Science Ltd
Place of publication
London, England
Rights statement
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