Relative Efficiencies of the Fitch-Margoliash, Maximum-Parsimony, Maximum-Likelihood, Minimum-Evolution, and Neighbor-joining Methods of Phylogenetic Tree Construction in Obtaining the Correct Tree

The relative efficiencies of several tree-making methods for obtaining the correct phylogenetic tree were studied by using computer simulation. The methods examined were the Fitch-Margoliash (FM), maximum-parsimony (MP), maximumlikelihood (ML), minimum-evolution (ME), and neighbor-joining (NJ) methods. We simulated the evolutionary changes of six DNA sequences each with a length of either 300 or 600 nucleotides.