[1] Supertree algorithms can highlight areas where additional data would most usefully resolve any ambiguities.
The Robinson-Foulds distance is the most popular of many ways of measuring how similar a supertree is to the input trees.
Alternative approaches have been developed to infer median supertree based on different metrics, e.g. relying on triplet or quartet decomposition of the trees.
[8][9] Supertrees have been applied to produce phylogenies of many groups, notably the angiosperms,[10] eukaryotes[11] and mammals.
[12] They have also been applied to larger-scale problems such as the origins of diversity, vulnerability to extinction,[13] and evolutionary models of ecological structure.