I have added another “Challenge” excel dataset 4408, to my site http://knordtvedt.home.bresnan.net Someone wanted to see how much or if more STRs might increase the accuracy of tree reconstruction from a sample of final haplotypes. So Challenge4408 has haplotypes of 150 STRs with total mutation rate of about .4 and with individual rates varying from about .01 down to .0001 If one wanted to compare how tree reconstruction compared with 150 STRs versus 100 or just 50, or 10 like we see in some popular books, one can simply delete whichever STR columns you want and proceed with your reconstruction. I’ll put the lockbox with tree details on my site in a few days. This is not intended to be some kind of contest. I originally thought people who have software or algorithms for tree reconstruction might want a test bed to see how their tools work in the context of bushy trees of the type which are often the object of reconstruction attempts these days. Nature, unfortunately, does not tell us the next morning after we tried to reconstruct part of it, what its Y tree structure really is. I, personally, don’t try to reconstruct tree phylogeny for the bushy trees of 3 or 4 thousand years of time depth to their MRCAs; I don’t think present haplotype tools are capable of doing this with any accuracy --- the nodes are just too close together. They can, however, do pretty good jobs of estimating TMRCAs for such trees, or interclade node ages between such trees. It will be interesting what 150 STR haplotypes with total M of about .4 can do. This represents trees hit about every 2.5 generations on average with an STR mutation. Nodes in these bushy trees are typically spaced substantially greater than 2.5 generations apart. Ken