We introduce a correspondence between phylogenetic trees and Brauer diagrams, inspired by links between binary trees and matchings described by Diaconis and Holmes (1998 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA95, 14 600–14 602. (doi:10.1073/pnas.95.25.14600)). This correspondence gives rise to a range of semigroup structures on the set of phylogenetic trees, and opens the prospect of many applications. We furthermore extend the Diaconis–Holmes correspondence from binary trees to non-binary trees and to forests, showing for instance that the set of all forests is in bijection with the set of partitions of finite sets.
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Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences