This project will use an array of 18 200MHz Pentium Pro processors with an aggregate memory of 1216 MB to reconstruct phylogenetic trees from molecular data sets that are too large for analysis by present methods, and to conduct large-scale comparative performance analyses of competing phylogenetic reconstruction algorithms. Large-scale phylogenetic reconstructions using parallel heuristic methods designed by the grantees are expected to lead to new results in seed plant evolution, and in the most- parsimonious reconstruction of the tree of life. Large-scale comparative performance analyses will explore a five-dimensional parameter space for data sets of 50 to 1000 sequences. These analyses are expected to lead to new observations of the relative strengths and weaknesses of competing methods and to new classes of adversarial examples.
