EUCALYPT: efficient tree reconciliation enumerator

BACKGROUND: Phylogenetic tree reconciliation is the approach of choice for investigating the coevolution of sets of organisms such as hosts and parasites. It consists in a mapping between the parasite tree and the host tree using event-based maximum parsimony. Given a cost model for the events, many optimal reconciliations are however possible. Any further biological interpretation of them must therefore take this into account, making the capacity to enumerate all optimal solutions a crucial point. Only two algorithms currently exist that attempt such enumeration; in one case not all possible solutions are produced while in the other not all cost vectors are currently handled. The objective of this paper is two-fold. The first is to fill this gap, and the second is to test whether the number of solutions generally observed can be an issue in terms of interpretation. RESULTS: We present a polynomial-delay algorithm for enumerating all optimal reconciliations. We show that in general many solutions exist. We give an example where, for two pairs of host-parasite trees having each less than 41 leaves, the number of solutions is 5120, even when only time-feasible ones are kept. To facilitate their interpretation, those solutions are also classified in terms of how many of each event they contain. The number of different classes of solutions may thus be notably smaller than the number of solutions, yet they may remain high enough, in particular for the cases where losses have cost 0. In fact, depending on the cost vector, both numbers of solutions and of classes thereof may increase considerably. To further deal with this problem, we introduce and analyse a restricted version where host switches are allowed to happen only between species that are within some fixed distance along the host tree. This restriction allows us to reduce the number of time-feasible solutions while preserving the same optimal cost, as well as to find time-feasible solutions with a cost close to the optimal in the cases where no time-feasible solution is found. CONCLUSIONS: We present Eucalypt, a polynomial-delay algorithm for enumerating all optimal reconciliations which is freely available at http://eucalypt.gforge.inria.fr/. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13015-014-0031-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.