An Approach to Answer: "How Tree-Like is a Network"

This report aims to answer the question of “how networky is my data?”. This question can have many repercussions on all types of phylogenetic data analysis helping to highlight biologically significant events. These can include hybridization, reticulation and gene flow. These events are all biologically interesting, but can all cause the underlying analysis assumption of a tree to no longer hold. The result of this project is a tested and verified methodology on which to test for data “networkyness” through a parametric bootstrap approach providing a statistical measure to answer that question. This entirely novel methodology is packaged up within a Java application for easy, everyday use. This application has been thoroughly tested with each component of the methodology validated in turn.