Description
Deduplicate candidate ancestral states and distinguish ambiguity from no known states.
Evolutionary summaries depend on sampled sequences/populations, reference states, ploidy, time units and stochastic assumptions. A mixture expectation differs from a drift simulation, and a callable-allele denominator differs from an individual count. Labels and local tree conditions do not reconstruct ancestry or establish a biological mechanism.
Deduplicate candidate ancestral states and distinguish ambiguity from no known states.
When to use this tool
Use Ancestral State Ambiguous Token when checking the stated evolutionary record, reference, expectation or scale convention.
How to use the tool and how it works
- Enter candidateStates. Use the units and conventions below.
- Run the tool. Correct any format, range, or cross-field input error before interpreting the output.
- Read statesJson, ambiguous, unknown. Inspect ambiguous, unknown before interpreting the associated values.
Require every candidate-state text nonempty. Deduplicate in first-appearance order, serialize the distinct list and flag ambiguous for more than one state or unknown for none.1
| Input field | Meaning and units | Accepted input |
|---|---|---|
| candidateStates | Candidate States | Required. Array of text; maximum UTF-16 length 8192; maximum items 256. |
| Output field | Interpretation | Returned shape |
|---|---|---|
| statesJson | States Json | Required. Text; maximum UTF-16 length 8192. |
| ambiguous | Ambiguous | Required. Boolean. |
| unknown | True for no distinct candidate states; this differs from ambiguous=true for multiple states. | Required. Boolean. |
{
"input": {
"candidateStates": [
"A",
"G",
"A"
]
},
"output": {
"statesJson": "[\"A\",\"G\"]",
"ambiguous": true,
"unknown": false
}
}Limitations and assumptions
- An empty list is unknown rather than ambiguous; no ancestral state, probability or phylogenetic reconstruction is inferred.
- Inputs must satisfy both the field types and the cross-field conditions above. Invalid input causes an error; a successful false flag or documented placeholder is a different result.
Alternative or Complementary methods
Use verified samples/references and appropriate complete phylogenetic, population-genetic or statistical models for actual biological inference and uncertainty.
References
Similar or alternative tools
- Mutation Type Reference Derived Pair
Classify an uppercase reference/derived base pair as unchanged, transition or transversion.
- Phylogeny Zero Branch Contraction Flag
Flag an enabled contraction only for an exactly zero-length branch.