Reconstructing Phylogenetic Level-1 Networks from Nondense Binet and Trinet Sets

Binets and trinets are phylogenetic networks with two and three leaves, respectively. Here we consider the problem of deciding if there exists a binary level-1 phylogenetic network displaying a given set 𝕋 of binary binets or trinets over a taxon set X , and constructing such a network whenever it exists. We show that this is NP-hard for trinets but polynomial-time solvable for binets. Moreover, we show that the problem is still polynomial-time solvable for inputs consisting of binets and trinets as long as the cycles in the trinets have size three. Finally, we present an O(3^|X| poly(|X|)) time algorithm for general sets of binets and trinets. The latter two algorithms generalise to instances containing level-1 networks with arbitrarily many leaves, and thus provide some of the first supernetwork algorithms for computing networks from a set of rooted phylogenetic networks.