Neighbor-Net: An Agglomerative Method for the Construction of Phylogenetic Networks

We present Neighbor-Net, a distance based method for constructing phylogenetic networks that is based on the Neighbor-Joining (NJ) algorithm of Saitou and Nei. Neighbor-Net provides a snapshot of the data that can guide more detailed analysis. Unlike split decomposition, Neighbor-Net scales well and can quickly produce detailed and informative networks for several hundred taxa. We illustrate the method by reanalyzing three published data sets: a collection of 110 highly recombinant Salmonella multi-locus sequence typing sequences, the 135 "African Eve" human mitochondrial sequences published by Vigilant et al., and a collection of 12 Archeal chaperonin sequences demonstrating strong evidence for gene conversion. Neighbor-Net is available as part of the SplitsTree4 software package.