Phylogenetics in a warm place: computational aspects of the Tropical Grassmannian

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Main Authors: Bhatt, Samir, Sabol, John, Dey, Papri, Penn, Matthew J., Duchene, David, Yoshida, Ruriko
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bhatt, Samir
Sabol, John
Dey, Papri
Penn, Matthew J.
Duchene, David
Yoshida, Ruriko
author_facet Bhatt, Samir
Sabol, John
Dey, Papri
Penn, Matthew J.
Duchene, David
Yoshida, Ruriko
contents Phylogenetic trees provide a fundamental representation of evolutionary relationships, yet the combinatorial explosion of possible tree topologies renders inference computationally challenging. Classical approaches to characterizing tree space, such as the Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann (BHV) space, offer elegant geometric structure but suffer from statistical and computational limitations. An alternative perspective arises from tropical geometry, the tropical Grassmannian tropGr(2,n), introduced by Speyer and Sturmfels, which coincides with phylogenetic tree space. In this paper, we review the structure of the tropical Grassmannian and present algorithmic methods for its computational study, including procedures for sampling from the tropical Grassmannian. Our aim is to make these concepts accessible to evolutionary biologists and computational scientists, and to motivate new research directions at the interface of algebraic geometry and phylogenetic inference.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_21765
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Phylogenetics in a warm place: computational aspects of the Tropical Grassmannian
Bhatt, Samir
Sabol, John
Dey, Papri
Penn, Matthew J.
Duchene, David
Yoshida, Ruriko
Populations and Evolution
Computation
Phylogenetic trees provide a fundamental representation of evolutionary relationships, yet the combinatorial explosion of possible tree topologies renders inference computationally challenging. Classical approaches to characterizing tree space, such as the Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann (BHV) space, offer elegant geometric structure but suffer from statistical and computational limitations. An alternative perspective arises from tropical geometry, the tropical Grassmannian tropGr(2,n), introduced by Speyer and Sturmfels, which coincides with phylogenetic tree space. In this paper, we review the structure of the tropical Grassmannian and present algorithmic methods for its computational study, including procedures for sampling from the tropical Grassmannian. Our aim is to make these concepts accessible to evolutionary biologists and computational scientists, and to motivate new research directions at the interface of algebraic geometry and phylogenetic inference.
title Phylogenetics in a warm place: computational aspects of the Tropical Grassmannian
topic Populations and Evolution
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21765