Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33257660›Full record

ArticleNature communications2020

An investigation of irreproducibility in maximum likelihood phylogenetic inference.

Xing-Xing Shen, Yuanning Li, Chris Todd Hittinger, Xue-Xin Chen, Antonis Rokas

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
32citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

32 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Bit-reproducible parallel phylogenetic tree inference.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2026
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Genetic Evidence ofGenes · 2025
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. A vector representation for phylogenetic trees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Genome-Wide Analysis of Aquaporins Gene Family inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024
    Article
  15. The Mitochondrial Genome ofInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024
    Article
  16. Review
  17. Article
  18. Incongruence in the phylogenomics era.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2023
    Review
  19. Article
  20. Computational Reproducibility of Molecular Phylogenies.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Xing-Xing ShenState Key Laboratory of Rice Biology, Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Zhejiang University, 310058, Hangzhou, China. xingxingshen@zju.edu.cn.ORCID 0000-0001-5765-1419
Yuanning LiDepartment of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37235, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-2206-5804
Chris Todd HittingerLaboratory of Genetics, J. F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution, Wisconsin Energy Institute, Center for Genomic Science Innovation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-5088-7461
Xue-Xin ChenState Key Laboratory of Rice Biology, Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Zhejiang University, 310058, Hangzhou, China.ORCID 0000-0002-9109-8853
Antonis RokasDepartment of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 37235, USA. antonis.rokas@vanderbilt.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-7248-6551

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Phylogenetic trees are essential for studying biology, but their reproducibility under identical parameter settings remains unexplored. Here, we find that 3515 (18.11%) IQ-TREE-inferred and 1813 (9.34%) RAxML-NG-inferred maximum likelihood (ML) gene trees are topologically irreproducible when executing two replicates (Run1 and Run2) for each of 19,414 gene alignments in 15 animal, plant, and fungal phylogenomic datasets. Notably, coalescent-based ASTRAL species phylogenies inferred from Run1 and Run2 sets of individual gene trees are topologically irreproducible for 9/15 phylogenomic datasets, whereas concatenation-based phylogenies inferred twice from the same supermatrix are reproducible. Our simulations further show that irreproducible phylogenies are more likely to be incorrect than reproducible phylogenies. These results suggest that a considerable fraction of single-gene ML trees may be irreproducible. Increasing reproducibility in ML inference will benefit from providing analyses' log files, which contain typically reported parameters (e.g., program, substitution model, number of tree searches) but also typically unreported ones (e.g., random starting seed number, number of threads, processor type).

Indexed as

PhylogenyReproducibility of ResultsAnimalsFungiGenesLikelihood FunctionsMammalsModels, GeneticModels, StatisticalPlants

Identifiers

PMID33257660
PMCPMC7705714

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.