A natural question is to be able to count the total number of distinctunrooted binary trees
having n leaves, where each leaf is labeled by some taxon. Before we can count
all these trees, however, we need to have a notion of when two such trees are the same.
Our tool will be the split. Recall from “Creating a Character Table” that removing any edge from
a tree T separates its leaves into sets S and Sc, so that
each edge of T can be labeled by this split S∣Sc. As a result,
an unrooted binary tree can be represented uniquely by its collection of splits.
Problem
Two unrooted binary treesT1 and T2 having the same n labeled leaves
are considered to be equivalent if there is some assignment of labels to the internal nodes
of T1 and T2 so that the adjacency lists of the two trees coincide.
As a result, note that T1 and T2 must have the same splits; conversely, if the two trees do not
have the same splits, then they are considered distinct.
Let b(n) denote the total number of distinct unrooted binary trees having n labeled leaves.