Abstract. A binary tanglegram is a pair 〈S, T 〉 of binary trees whose leaf sets are in one-to-one correspondence; matching leaves are connected by inter-tree edges. For applications, for example in phylogenetics, it is essential that both trees are drawn without edge crossings and that the inter-tree edges have as few crossings as possible. It is known that finding a drawing with the minimum number of crossings is NP-hard and that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to that number. We prove that under the Unique Games Conjecture there is no constantfactor approximation for general binary trees. We show that the problem is hard even if both trees are complete binary trees. For this case we give an O(n 3)-time 2-approximation and a new and simple fixed-parameter algorithm. We show that the maximization version of the dual problem for general binary trees can be reduced to a version of MaxCut for which the algorithm of Goemans and Williamson yields a 0.878-approximation. 1

Abstract. Several applications require the joint display of two phylogenetic trees whose leaves are matched by inter-tree edges. This issue arises, for example, when comparing gene trees and species trees or when studying the co-speciation of hosts and parasites. The tanglegram layout problem seeks to produce a layout of the two trees that minimizes the number of crossings between the inter-tree edges. This problem is well-studied for the case when the mappings between the leaves of the two trees is one-to-one. However, in typical biological applications, this mapping is seldom one-to-one. In this work we (i) define a generalization of the tanglegram layout problem, called the Generalized Tanglegram Layout (GTL) problem, which allows for arbitrary interconnections between the leaves of the two trees, (ii) provide efficient algorithms for the case when the layout of one tree is fixed, (iii) discuss the fixed parameter tractability and approximability of the GTL problem, (iv) formulate heuristic solutions for the GTL problem, and (v) evaluate our algorithms experimentally. 1

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faster fixed-parameter approach to drawing

A tanglegram is a pair of trees on the same set of leaves with matching leaves in the two trees joined by an edge. Tanglegrams are widely used in biology – to compare evolutionary histories of host and parasite species and to analyze genes of species in the same geographical area. We consider optimizations problems in tanglegram drawings. We show a linear time algorithm to decide if a tanglegram admits a planar embedding by a reduction to the planar graph drawing problem. This problem was also studied by Fernau, Kauffman and Poths (FSTTCS 2005). A similar reduction to a graph crossing problem also helps to solve an open problem they posed, showing a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for minimizing the number of crossings over all d-ary trees. For the case where one tree is fixed, we show an O(n log n) algorithm to determine the drawing of the second tree that minimizes the number of crossings. This improves the bound from earlier methods. We introduce a new optimization criterion using Spearman’s footrule distance and give an O(n 2) algorithm. We also show integer programming formulations to quickly obtain tanglegram drawings that minimize the two optimization measures discussed. We prove lower bounds on the maximum gap between the optimal solution and the heuristic of Dwyer and Schreiber (Austral. Symp. on Info. Vis. 2004) to minimize crossings. 1