Computing the rooted triplet distance between galled trees by counting triangles

• Authors: Jesper Jansson;Andrzej Lingas
• Venue: Journal of Discrete Algorithms
• Year: 2014

We consider a generalization of the rooted triplet distance between two phylogenetic trees to two phylogenetic networks. We show that if each of the two given phylogenetic networks is a so-called galled tree with n leaves then the rooted triplet distance can be computed in o(n^2^.^6^8^7) time. Our upper bound is obtained by reducing the problem of computing the rooted triplet distance between two galled trees to that of counting monochromatic and almost-monochromatic triangles in an undirected, edge-colored graph. To count different types of colored triangles in a graph efficiently, we extend an existing technique based on matrix multiplication and obtain several new algorithmic results that may be of independent interest: (i) the number of triangles in a connected, undirected, uncolored graph with m edges can be computed in o(m^1^.^4^0^8) time; (ii) if G is a connected, undirected, edge-colored graph with n vertices and C is a subset of the set of edge colors then the number of monochromatic triangles of G with colors in C can be computed in o(n^2^.^6^8^7) time; and (iii) if G is a connected, undirected, edge-colored graph with n vertices and R is a binary relation on the colors that is computable in O(1) time then the number of R-chromatic triangles in G can be computed in o(n^2^.^6^8^7) time.