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Figure 1 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Figure 1

From: Heterotachy and long-branch attraction in phylogenetics

Figure 1

Illustration of the branch length heterogeneity conditions commonly referred as the Felsenstein zone (a) and the Farris zone (b). The Felsenstein zone [3] is characterised by two long branches that are not adjacent in the model topology, a situation where most phylogenetic methods fall into the long-branch attraction artefact [1]. Conversely, in the Farris zone [17], also called the inverse-Felsenstein zone [8], the two long branches are adjacent in the model topology. This last condition strongly favours MP over ML because of the intrinsic bias of parsimony towards interpreting multiple changes that occurred along the two long branches as false synapomorphies [8].

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