A phylogeny is a tree that relates taxonomic units based on their similarity over a set of characteristics. The phylogeny problem under the parsimony criterion consists in finding a phylogeny with a minimum number of evolutionary steps. We propose hybrid heuristic methods - based on GRASP, path-relinking and genetic algorithm methodologies - to build a phylogeny while minimizing parsimony. Computational experiments using benchmark conditions are reported, and the results obtained by the proposed hybrid heuristics are compared with the solutions obtained by a traditional GRASP (without hybridization) heuristic and with previously reported solutions in the literature. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed heuristics are efficient in terms of solution quality and time-to-target-value.
Phylogeny problem; Evolutionary trees; GRASP; Path-relinking; Genetic algorithm; Heuristics
