Phylogenetic reconciliation

In phylogenetics, reconciliation is an approach to connect the history of two or more coevolving biological entities. The general idea of reconciliation is that a phylogenetic tree representing the evolution of an entity (e.g. homologous genes or symbionts) can be drawn within another phylogenetic tree representing an encompassing entity (respectively, species, hosts) to reveal their interdependence and the evolutionary events that have marked their shared history. The development of reconciliation approaches started in the 1980s, mainly to depict the coevolution of a gene and a genome, and of a host and a symbiont, which can be mutualist, commensalist or parasitic. It has also been used for example to detect horizontal gene transfer, or understand the dynamics of genome evolution.

Phylogenetic reconciliation can account for a diversity of evolutionary trajectories of what makes life's history, intertwined with each other at all scales that can be considered, from molecules to populations or cultures. A recent avatar of the importance of interactions between levels of organization is the holobiont concept, where a macro-organism is seen as a complex partnership of diverse species. Modeling the evolution of such complex entities is one of the challenging and exciting direction of current research on reconciliation.