A program for calculating and displaying compatibility matrices as an aid in determining reticulate evolution in molecular sequences

Abstract

Reticulate evolution in molecular sequences is caused by recombination or gene conversion, and may interfere with the reconstruction of evolutionary history. This paper presents a program which calculates compatibility matrices for detecting reticulate evolution. In addition to visual inspection of matrices, they can be analysed statistically for clustering. The method is demonstrated using human and chimpanzee gamma-globin sequences.