Enumerative and Distributional Results for $d$-combining Tree-Child Networks

Abstract: Tree-child networks are one of the most prominent network classes for modeling evolutionary processes which contain reticulation events. Several recent studies have addressed counting questions for bicombining tree-child networks in which every reticulation node has exactly two parents. We extend these studies to $d$-combining tree-child networks where every reticulation node has now $d\geq 2$ parents, and we study one-component as well as general tree-child networks. For the number of one-component networks, we derive an exact formula from which asymptotic results follow that contain a stretched exponential for $d=2$, yet not for $d \geq 3$. For general networks, we find a novel encoding by words which leads to a recurrence for their numbers. From this recurrence, we derive asymptotic results which show the appearance of a stretched exponential for all $d \geq 2$. Moreover, we also give results on the distribution of shape parameters (e.g., number of reticulation nodes, Sackin index) of a network which is drawn uniformly at random from the set of all tree-child networks with the same number of leaves. We show phase transitions depending on $d$, leading to normal, Bessel, Poisson, and degenerate distributions. Some of our results are new even in the bicombining case.