skbio.tree.TreeNode.lca

TreeNode.lca(tipnames)

Find lowest common ancestor for a list of tips.

Parameters:

tipnamesiterable of TreeNode or str

The nodes of interest

Returns:

TreeNode

The lowest common ancestor of the passed in nodes

Raises:

ValueError

If no tips could be found in the tree, or if not all tips were found.

Examples

>>> from skbio import TreeNode
>>> tree = TreeNode.read(["((a,b)c,(d,e)f)root;"])
>>> nodes = [tree.find('a'), tree.find('b')]
>>> lca = tree.lowest_common_ancestor(nodes)
>>> print(lca.name)
c
>>> nodes = [tree.find('a'), tree.find('e')]
>>> lca = tree.lca(nodes)  # lca is an alias for convience
>>> print(lca.name)
root