Mean and Variance of Phylogenetic Trees

Abstract: We describe the use of the Frechet mean and variance in the Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann (BHV) treespace to summarize and explore the diversity of a set of phylogenetic trees. We show that the Frechet mean is comparable to other summary methods, and, despite its stickiness property, is more likely to be binary than the majority-rules consensus tree. We show that the Frechet variance is faster and more precise than commonly used variance measures. The Frechet mean and variance are more theoretically justified, and more robust, than previous estimates of this type, and can be estimated reasonably efficiently, providing a foundation for building more advanced statistical methods and leading to applications such as mean hypothesis testing.