{
  "id": 15540844,
  "title": "DIMPLE: A Tree-Guided Divide-and-Conquer Framework for ILS-Aware Phylogenetic Network Inference on Large-Scale Data",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/18/dimple-a-tree-guided-divide-and-conquer-framework-for-ils-aware",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-18T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758494v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Inferring evolutionary histories of species is crucial for comparative genomics and evolutionary analyses. Reticulate evolution often leads to phylogenetic networks, which better represent relationships than traditional species trees. However, accurately reconstructing large phylogenetic networks is difficult due to the immense number of possible network topologies.\n\nResearchers have introduced DIMPLE, a divide-and-conquer framework for phylogenetic network inference, allowing no restrictions on network level. DIMPLE utilizes a tree-of-blobs (TOB), which symbolizes tree-like relationships between regions where reticulations may exist, while leaving relationships within those regions uncertain. Within each unresolved region, DIMPLE divides the set of taxa into non-overlapping subsets, each containing a user-defined maximum number of taxa. Several division runs are permitted, and subsets from different runs may share taxa. DIMPLE then infers a subnetwork for each subset, merges them within each region, and combines the resulting networks into a network encompassing the entire taxon set.\n\nEmpirical studies using true datasets show that DIMPLE effectively merges networks, providing enhanced reticulation recovery compared to existing methods on higher-level networks. When dealing with estimated datasets, DIMPLE maintains competitive topological accuracy and frequently recovers hybrid ancestry across a range of network complexities. Its computational demands allow for analyses of hundreds of taxa. Applications to fern and gymnosperm datasets successfully recover documented hybridization and previously acknowledged phylogenetic conflict.",
  "summary": "Inferring evolutionary histories of species provides a foundation for comparative genomics and evolutionary analyses. Extensive evidence of reticulate evolution motivates the inference of phylogenetic networks, which represent relationships that species trees cannot capture. However, accurate reconstruction of large phylogenetic networks remains a major challenge because of the vast space of…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}