The Hall Phylogenetic Chart

Tree of the Hall Family Project
Original tree: June 2007

Updated March 2008 with thanks to Julian Hall for suggesting the update and for assistance. There are some significant differences between the original tree and the current tree. That such differences occur is not surprising. The differences arise from better data (more individuals with greater than 12 markers) and from a 43% increase in the number of individuals on the tree. It should be kept in mid that a phylogenetic tree is not "truth", only an estimate of the ancestral relationships among individuals based on the data available at the time.

The following chart shows a phylogenetic tree of the Hall family based upon the Y-chromosome data on the Hall DNA Project/Results web page http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~nhatcher/hall/

A phylogenetic tree is constructed strictly from the DNA Y-chromosome marker DNA data and does not use any genealogical information. While genealogy has grouped some individuals into families, it usually does not provide information about the historical relationships of those families. The phylogenetic analysis estimates the relationships of those families and of those individuals who are not assigned to families. Confidence in both the phylogenetic method and the genealogical method is increased by the agreement of the two methods. In no case does the phylogenetic evidence put members of the same genealogical family into different groups.

The tips of the tree are labeled by the kit number or numbers. When there is more than one number those individual kit results were identical Some groups of individuals are marked as belonging to a Family, with the Family numbers taken from the Hall DNA Project results page. Sometimes an individual will be included within a family even though that individual is not assigned to that family on the Hall DNA Project results page, e.g. #34508 is assigned to Family 12 because that individual groups with the members of Family 12 by the molecular phylogenetic analysis.

The vertical lines represent common ancestors and are called "internal nodes" of the tree. The left-most vertical line, with a short horizontal "tail" extending to its left, represents the root of the tree or the common ancestor of all of the Halls on the Hall DNA Project results page. That root was established by using the Y-chromosome 12-marker alleles for an individual of the Xiong family as an "outgroup", based on the assumption that an Xiong is likely to be more distantly related to each of the Halls than we are to each other.

The horizontal lines represent branches that connect nodes to each other or to individuals at the tips of the tree. The lengths of the lines do not indicate how distantly groups are related. With the present data, a mixture of 12-marker, 25-marker and 37-marker samples, it is not possible to obtain meaningful estimates of the true branch lengths. Without knowing branch lengths it is not possible to estimate the times that has elapsed since groups or individuals shared common ancestors on the tree. However, in comparing any pair of individuals on that tree the number of generations to the most recent common ancestor can be estimated by comparing the allele profiles using the approach illustrated by Family Tree DNA on the page at http://www.familytreedna.com/faq2.html

The phylogenetic tree was estimated by Barry G. Hall, Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of Rochester and author of "Phylogenetic Trees Made Easy: A How-to manual, 3rd edition", 2007, published by Sinauer Assoc. The tree was estimated using the Neighbor Joining method and markers 1-37.

Questions? Please contact barryghall@mac.com

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