What fruits can we get from this tree? A journey in phylogenetic inference through likelihood modeling

This thesis provides new tools for extracting information on the process of diversification from a phylogenetic tree. To do so the standard approach is to employ likelihood functions in order to estimate the best parameters for the diversification models via likelihood maximization. The parameters for this kind of models usually represent the diversification rates at which the various evolutionary events (e.g., speciations or extinctions) can take place in the process.