In this paper we propose a statistical   hypothesis test which tells whether two phylogenetic trees are significantly   incongruent to each other by comparing two distributions for phylogenetic trees, instead of   comparing two point   estimations. More specifically we will compare two distributions of   trees using difference of means. Our statistical hypotheses are:

H0: Phylogenetic trees T1 and T2 are   congruent.

H1: Phylogenetic trees T1 and T2 are   incongruent.

Usually a statistical test on the above   hypotheses considers point estimates of the trees obtained by a tree   reconstruction method, such as maximum likelihood (ML) estimates (Felsenstein, 1981; Galtier et   al., 2005) or the neighbor-joining method (Saitou and Nei, 1987). See Schardl et al. (2008)   and references within for an overview. Variation of reasonable tree estimates   can be assessed, for example, by using the bootstrap or jackknife method.

本文提出了一种统计假设检验，通过比较两棵系统发生树的分布，而不是比较两点估计，来判断两个系统发生树之间是否存在显著的不一致（显著差异）。更具体地说，我们将使用平均值差异比较两种树木分布。我们的统计假设是：

零假设（H0）：系统发生树T1和T2是一致的。

备择假设（H1）：系统发生树T1和T2不一致。

通常，对上述假设的统计检验考虑了通过树重建方法获得的树的点估计，例如最大似然（ML）估计（Felsenstein, 1981; Galtier et al., 2005）或邻接法（Saitou and Nei, 1987）。见Schardl et al.   (2008)及其参考文献。合理的树估计值的变化可以被评估，例如，使用自举检验或刀切法。