Systematic Errors in Phylogenetic Trees

The effort to reconstruct the tree of life was revolutionized by the use of sequences of proteins and nucleic acids. Phylogenetic trees are now routinely inferred using hundreds of thousands of amino acid or nucleotide characters. It thus seems surprising that many aspects of the tree of life are still controversial; conflicting results between large scale phylogenomic studies show that errors remain common despite large datasets. These errors often result from systematic biases in the way sequences evolve. While the resulting systematic errors are well understood, it requires careful efforts to reduce their effects.