Robinson Foulds (RF) Distance - tahiri-lab/KMeansPhyloTreesClustering GitHub Wiki

🔬 Robinson-Foulds (RF) Distance

General Definition

The Robinson-Foulds (RF) distance is a metric used to measure the difference between two tree structures.

It works by comparing how two trees partition the same set of elements.

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How it works

Each tree can be represented as a set of splits (partitions).

A split divides the elements into two groups.

Example:

(A, B) | (C, D)

The RF distance counts how many splits are different between two trees.

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Formula

RF(T1, T2) = (splits in T1 not in T2) + (splits in T2 not in T1)

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Properties

• RF = 0 → trees are identical
• Higher RF → trees are more different
• Only topology is considered (not branch lengths)

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🌳 RF Distance in Bioinformatics

In bioinformatics, phylogenetic trees represent evolutionary relationships between species or genes.

Each split corresponds to:

• a separation between groups of species
• a hypothesis about common ancestry

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Interpretation

• If two trees have similar splits → they represent similar evolutionary hypotheses
• If RF distance is high → the trees suggest different evolutionary histories

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Role in this project

RF distance is used to:

• quantify differences between phylogenetic trees
• provide a similarity measure for clustering

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