Quartet: Pairwise Phylogenetic Tree Distances Using Quartet and Split Measures

A tool for calculating the symmetric quartet distance between cladograms, based on the method of Bandelt & Dress (1986). It implements the tqDist algorithm by Sand et al. (2014) for efficient computation of quartet and triplet distances between binary or general trees. The dataset or tool is authored by Martin R. Smith.

Use Cases

• Compare evolutionary hypotheses based on quartet distance measures between cladograms.
• Benchmark phylogenetic tree reconstruction algorithms based on quartet and split consistency.
• Analyze topological similarity between binary trees using the tqDist algorithm.

Strengths

• Implements a peer-reviewed distance metric (symmetric quartet distance) from a 1986 publication.
• Uses the tqDist algorithm, a published method from 2014 for efficient distance calculation.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Row count and data format are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Martin R. Smith

Collection Method

Likely a software tool or dataset for computational phylogenetics.