Figure 3. Estimation of Δd̂ when the tree is uncertain.

The level of uncertainty, i.e., our inability to find the true tree, was measured as symmetric tree-to-tree distances (y-axis), at 11 evenly logarithmic distributed expected rates (Δd; x-axis). The estimated rate was compared to the true rate (in the true tree) and the average Δd̂/Δd is indicated by the color scale at the right. The resulting heat maps are at Δd /H=0.2 in A, Δd/H=0.5 in B, and Δd/H=0.8 in C. Each data point (colored block) is the average of 100 random simulated and reconstructed trees with 20 OTUs in each sample.